
cub. 



Class_ 

Book .$ ^5 A3 



CHAPTERS FROM 
CHILDHOOD 







Juliet Hueffer (aged 4) 

(Mrs. Soskice) 
After a drawing by Ford Madox-Brown 



CHAPTERS FROM 
CHILDHOOD 

Reminiscences of an Artist's Granddaughter 

By 
JULIET M. SOSKICE 

With a Foreword by 
A. G. GARDINER 



Illustrated with Portraits 



m 



NEW YORK 

HARCOURT BRACE AND COMPANY 

1922 






First published 1921 



, i* 



Printed in Great Britain. 



FOREWORD 

THE literature of childhood is not voluminous. 
There is abundant literature and often admir- 
able literature for the child, fairy tales and tales of 
adventure, and animal stories of the " Black Beauty " 
genre. Swift even turned his terrific wrath with 
mankind to the uses of the nursery, and Bunyan 
made the agonies of the spiritual pilgrim as thrilling 
and vivid an experience to the child as the tap of 
Pew's stick on the frosty ground in " Treasure 
Island/ ' But the literature of childhood, the litera- 
ture which re-creates the thought and feelings of the 
child mind when the experiences of life are new and 
strange, and before the glamour of the revelation 
has faded into the light of common day, are rare. 
It demands many unusual qualities : an intense 
visual memory, an imaginative sympathy, and that 
power of recalling emotion long after the emotion 
has passed which has been described as the essential 
quality of poetry. It was in this evocation of the 
child that the genius of Dickens touched its highest 
expression, and there is no better title to immortality 



VI FOREWORD 

than the first part of " David Copperfield." The 
slighter sketches of Kenneth Graham in " The 
Golden Age " and " Dream Days " have the same 
revealing beauty ; but it is the beauty of childhood 
seen through the medium of disillusioning years. 
The humour and the joy are the character of the 
child, but the pathos is the pathos of memory. In 
these " Chapters from Childhood " we have, I think, 
an indisputable addition to the authentic literature 
of childhood. The writer had the advantage of an 
unusual setting for her experiences. To have had 
Ford Madox-Brown for grandfather and playmate, 
to have lived in the Rossetti circle was to have had 
an introduction to life of a quality that falls to few, 
and though it is not the circumstances of childhood, 
but the emotional reaction to circumstances, which 
is the soul of its literature, this record gains from the 
setting. The picture of F. M. B. in his old age, as 
seen through the eyes of his " little pigeon," has the 
untroubled beauty of the child vision, but no less 
remarkable are the thumbnail sketches, at once artless 
and penetrating, of the nameless and ordinary people 
who flit across the field of view, the amiable police- 
man, the lovesick cabman, the Reverend Mother, 
the nuns, the domestic servants. They are called 
from the past with a sudden freshness and a certainty 
of touch that convey the sense of personal contact. 



FOREWORD Vll 

They appear only to disappear, but they dwell in the 
memory with the significance of permanent types of 
the human drama. But the chief person on the little 
stage is the child herself, and it is as a record of the 
first impressions of things and the first intellectual 
and emotional reaction to ideas, that these chapters 
are chiefly valuable. The name of Mrs. Soskice is 
familiar to the reading world, through her remarkable 
rendering of the great poem of Nekrassov, " The 
Poet of the People's Sorrow/ ' the Piers Plowman of 
Russian literature. In this book she reveals an 
original gift of a high order from which the public 
will expect much. 

A. G. GARDINER. 



AUTHOR'S PREFACE 

THESE reminiscences, written a long time ago, 
are not a recital of facts from day to day, with 
stated names and dates, but merely the presentation 
of certain scenes and incidents of childhood, such as 
often remain clearly in the memory long after 
childhood has passed. 

I trust that the memory of my late grandfather, 
Ford Madox-Brown, whom I have portrayed here, 
as far as my account goes, as faithfully, I think, as if 
I had had recourse to many dates and documents ; 
and that of my late uncle, William Michael Rossetti, 
whose household also figures in these notes, will 
serve as an apology for their appearance. 

The fact that my mother, Mrs. Francis HuerTer, 
was, for the most part, ill and away during the period 
of my life herein recorded, and that my brothers, 
Oliver and Ford Madox-Hueffer, were boys at school 
older than myself, accounts for their being so little 
mentioned in these recollections. 

I have included the chapter about my life in the 
convent because, I fancy, life in convent-schools is 
little known here in England, and may prove of 
interest to some readers. 

J. s. 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER PAGE 

FOREWORD, BY A. G. GARDINER . . V 



author's PREFACE ix 



I. SOCIAL REFORMERS .... I 

II. IN MY GRANDFATHER'S HOUSE . . 30 

III. THE CONVENT 74 

IV. I GO TO GERMANY . . . . 1 46 

V. I FIND SOMETHING TO BELIEVE IN . 201 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



FACING 
PAGE 



Juliet Hueffer (Mrs. Soskice), aged 4 Frontispiece 
From a coloured drawing by Ford Madox- 
Brown. 

Ford Madox-Brown 30 

From a drawing by Mrs. Catherine Hueffer 

Mrs. Ford Madox-Brown ... 42 

From a pencil drawing by Dante Gabriel 
Rossetti. 

Ford Madox-Brown, on his Death-bed . 68 
" Drawn by candle-light with an aching 
heart " by Frederick Shields. 

Oliver Madox-Brown, on the Night after 

his Death 72 

From a drawing by Ford Madox-Brown. 

Mrs. Soskice, 1915 146 

From a drawing by E. Gertrude Thomson. 

Mrs. Catherine Hueffer (Cathy Madox- 
Brown) ...... 202 

By Ford Madox-Brown. 



F 



CHAPTER I 

SOCIAL REFORMERS 
I 

OR some time after my father's death my 
mother was ill and away, and I was sent to live 
with my aunt and uncle. # They lived in a large 
grey house with steps up to the front door, and steps 
down to the area, and a great many stairs leading up 
to the top landings. The walls of all the rooms and 
staircases were covered with pictures, many with 
very bright colours in broad gilt frames. There 
were some portraits of other relations painted by a 
famous artist who was my uncle's brother .f 

I had four cousins, who, though they were young, 
were social reformers. Mary was seven ; Helen 
was nine ; Arthur was about fourteen ; and Olive 
was fifteen at least. I was eight, and I became a 
social reformer too. 

We were anarchists. We believed that all people 

should be equal, and that nobody should possess 

more than anybody else ; and we hoped for the 

* Mr. and Mrs. William Michael Rossetti. 
t Dante Gabriel Rossetti. 



2 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD 

social revolution. We had one big red banner in 
common, and we three little ones had a smaller one 
of the same colour for our special use. They both 
had some words on them, cut out of silver paper and 
pasted on with glue. I don't remember the words, 
but they were mottoes of some kind. The banners 
looked very bright and expensive, especially in the 
open air. 

We had an anarchist page-boy. He was the son 
of my aunt's French cook. He had red hair and a 
cross, spotty face, and he used to open the door in 
the afternoon when visitors came. When he wasn't 
sitting in the hall he was supposed to be helping his 
mother in the kitchen, peeling potatoes and cleaning 
boots. But he never seemed to do much work. 
He disliked work because it tired him so. When he 
was in the kitchen he used to sit by the table with 
his arms spread out upon it and eat whatever his 
mother put in front of him, and when she would not 
give him any more he went into the larder to find 
food. He never said what he was going to eat, so 
that we were always being disappointed at table 
because at the last moment he had eaten something 
that was needed in the cooking. At first his mother 
used to say it was the cat, but after a time it couldn't 
be hidden any longer, because he ate so many things 
no cat would ever touch. He sulked when he was 



SOCIAL REFORMERS 3 

spoken to about it, and grumbled because he had 
not been educated to be a public speaker. 

He, of course, also thought that everybody should 
be equal and possess no more than everybody else. 
He said that he, for instance, was a uniformed slave 
of the capitalist system. He used to lie on the 
dining-room sofa with his legs thrown up over the 
back of it and his coat unbuttoned and explain his 
views about it. He thought it was a shame that he 
was forced to wear a coat with a long row of degrading 
buttons up the front as a token of servitude, and 
waste his youth on helping his mother who toiled 
and sweated in our kitchens while we, the repre- 
sentatives of the tyrant classes, wore what we liked 
and were provided for. 

He said that he was a son of France, and that in 
France they had once got up a revolution and 
chopped the heads off all the tyrants. Tyrants' 
heads rolled off into the basket underneath the 
guillotine as quickly as peas out of the shucks into 
the basin when his mother shelled them. One day, 
he said, the same thing would happen here, and then 
" our " turn would come, and he and his mother and 
their kind would triumph. Till then they would 
be patient and hug their grief in secret. French 
people are more excitable and say more serious 
things than the English do, We used to sit round 



4 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD 

him on the floor, and hug our knees and listen. We 
felt ashamed and apologetic, and it was very difficult 
to think of anything to say to comfort him. Of 
course, it wasn't our fault, and we longed for the 
revolution. It was in our programme. Once my 
aunt came in and found him lying on the sofa, and 
she grabbed him by the ear and led him straight out of 
the room, right to the top of the kitchen stairs. She 
said she only kept him for his mother's sake. We 
all got up from the floor and stood close together. I 
shall never forget how angry we were, and how 
terrible our faces looked when she was doing it. It 
seemed to come just as a proof of what he was always 
saying : how unjust the world was, and how the 
tyrants always got the best of it. 

We had an anarchist printing press down in the 
front room of the basement. We printed an anarchist 
newspaper on it. Olive and Arthur wrote most of 
the articles themselves. The page always promised 
to write something for it, but he never did, because 
he said he couldn't find the time. Sometimes they 
got an article from a real outside social reformer. 
The paper was called The Torch, and we used to sell 
it in Hyde Park on Sunday, and on the platforms of 
the biggest railway stations. I think it must have 
been interesting and uncommon, because whenever 
anybody bought a copy they would first stand for 



SOCIAL REFORMERS 5 

some time staring at the cover, and as soon as they 
got to the title of the first article they would to an 
absolute certainty (we knew because we used to 
watch) turn round suddenly and stare after us. I 
can't remember the headings of any of the articles, 
but I think there was an incitement to revolution in 
every copy. It was probably most about the moans 
of the classes trodden under foot, and the bloody 
(if it couldn't be done otherwise) repression of 
tyrants. That is what we were chiefly interested in 
at the time. 

My aunt* didn't like the printing press. She was 
tall and narrow-shouldered and stooping. She had 
a broad, high nose, and a long, rather severe face. 
She kept her mouth shut tight except when she was 
speaking, and her lips jutted out a little, especially 
when she was thinking about something interesting. 

She was always moving about very quickly over 
the house. She used to sweep into the schoolroom 
early in the morning in a brown cloth dressing-gown, 
when we were having lessons, and listen for a minute. 
Then she would whirl the governess out of her chair 
and give us the lessons herself. She knew how to 
hit on the parts we knew least. Her voice went very 
high and very low, and she explained beautifully. 

* Mrs. Rossetti was the eldest daughter of Ford Madox- 
Brown. 



6 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD 

Whenever my uncle gave me half-a-crown to spend 
she took it away to buy my stockings with. She 
loved me, but she thought that children should be 
taught to be economical. She was very clever and 
used to lecture about the rights of women ; and she 
had written several books and painted pictures. 
She knew a great deal about education. Sometimes 
she whipped her children when they fell down and 
hurt themselves, to teach them to be more careful, 
but she never did at any other time. In the afternoon 
when she was not busy she would nearly always 
smile and answer the most difficult questions. 

She used to sweep along the streets just as quickly 
as she swept about the house. When we went out 
with her we used to follow in a tail quite out of 
breath. 

She said that no one had the right to spend one 
idle moment on this globe. If she couldn't write 
or teach and lecture she would scrub, or sweep the 
streets, or clean drains rather than be idle. She said 
work, work, work, was the object of life. 

She wore quite old clothes in the street, because 
she said it was wrong to spend much money on 
clothes. She cut down Olive's dresses for Helen 
when Olive had done with them, and cut them still 
smaller for Mary when Helen had. She ate up all 
the fat and gristly pieces on her plate because she 



SOCIAL REFORMERS 7 

said luxurious habits were detestable, and she made 
us eat them too, except Helen, because she was 
delicate. 

She was very kind to the poor. Once we met a 
man in Tottenham Court Road, and he asked her 
for a penny to buy some food. She went into a shop 
and bought a big white roll for him and a hunk of 
cheese. When she came out and gave it to him, he 
opened it and said, quite quietly and not angrily at 
all, " You might have stood a pat of butter, Madam, " 
and she looked at him and went back into the shop 
and paid the shopman to cut the roll and spread some 
butter on it. Then the man began to eat it at once. 
We thought she would have been angry, but she was 
not, only thoughtful. 

Sometimes she would say, " And now we'll go and 
see Christina,"* and we did so. 

She was a very kind poetess who lived in one of 
a row of houses in Torrington Square and wrote 
poems that usually ended sadly. She was very 
religious, and sometimes she used to put on a long 
black veil and go into a sisterhood to pray. But at 
other times she wore a black dress and a white lace 
cap, and we used to find her in the back room of her 
house with her hands folded, thinking and waiting 
for the kettle to boil. But, of course, she did other 
* Christina Rossetti. 



8 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD 

things as well. Once she made me a tiny dining- 
room table and half a dozen chairs out of chestnuts 
and pins and red string, and put them in a little box 
and gave them to me and said, " When you look at 
them, remember Aunt Christina, " and I did. 

She had a mild religious face, and smooth hair, 
and very big grey eyes, rather prominent. When 
we came in she was always glad, and she used to say, 
" Welcome, merry little maidens," and made us sit 
round the table and have tea, and eat as much as we 
wanted. She had a big cupboard with sweets in it, 
and a glass tank full of gold-fish, and two very 
ancient ugly aunts who lay in beds on the opposite 
sides of a room, with a strip of carpet in the middle. 

They were so old that they couldn't stand up, and 
they could hardly talk. They always seemed to me 
to be waving their long skinny hands. They wore 
big nightcaps with frills round the edges and flowered 
bed-jackets. 

They were very fond of children and, after tea, I 
used to be sent up for them to look at. They used 
to stretch out their hands to me, and I used to stand 
on the strip of carpet between them and seem rude 
and unwilling to make friends. But it was really 
because I was frightened, for they reminded me of the 
wolf when he had eaten Red- Riding-Hood's grand- 
mother up, and put on her nightcap and got into 



SOCIAL REFORMERS 0, 

bed. They were, in fact, very affectionate, and 
wanted to be kind to me. It was only because they 
were so old and dried and wrinkled that I was 
frightened. 

The reason that my aunt disliked the printing 
machine was that the day on which the paper went 
to press we were all quite black with the part that 
comes oif on your hands and face, and Olive and 
Arthur were hot and irritable. Besides, she said, it 
was not right for my uncle, who was employed by 
the Government, to have a paper of that kind printed 
in his house. When people of importance came to 
see my uncle it could be heard quite plainly from 
his study, groaning in the basement. But Uncle 
William stood up for us and protected it. 

He had a head and face that, joined together, were 
an exact oval. His head was perfectly bald and 
shiny on the top, but he had a little white tufty 
fringe at the back that reached right down to his 
collar. He was tall and rather bent, and he wore a 
black frock-coat with a turn-down collar, and rather 
wide trousers. He had thick white eyebrows and 
dark eyes. We loved him almost better than any 
one, because he was so gentle and stuck to us through 
thick and thin about everything, not only about the 
printing press. He always read the articles in the 
paper, and he would smile and make suggestions in 



IO CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD 

his kind soft voice. But he always said to us, 
" Don't you think so ? " not at all as if he really 
knew better than we. Aunt Lucy didn't really keep 
the page-boy so much for his mother's sake as that 
Uncle William protected him and said he had an 
interesting character, and he was going to send him 
to the Polytechnic. 

II 

We three little ones had a special mission of our 
own, although it was all part of the same work. It 
was the reformation of policemen. Of course, we 
understood very well that if we could get them on 
our side it would be a very great thing. We felt 
nervous when we undertook the work, but Olive 
told us that that kind of agitation was quite within 
the law until the policemen had actually begun to 
rebel against their chiefs. Then, of course, it would 
be a case of save yourself whoever can. I think she 
looked it up in some sort of Blue Book before we 
started. She was always getting worried and looking 
things up because she was so anxious that no mistakes 
should be made. 

What we had to explain to the police was that it 
was most unfair to put a man in prison merely for 
taking what he needed from another man who had 
more than the first man had. There are so many 



SOCIAL REFORMERS II 

riches in the world that there is no reason why 
every man should not have enough for himself, and 
if the second man has too much and can't be per- 
suaded by kindness to share it with the first man who 
hasn't enough, then the first man has every right to 
take it from the second by force. The second man 
depends entirely upon the armed supporters of the 
law, who are the police and military, to aid and abet 
him in his greediness, and every right-minded 
policeman should feel ashamed to strike a blow in 
such a horrid cause. That was our programme in a 
nutshell. 

We took our banner, the smaller one, with us to 
give us confidence, and we arranged it as we went 
along. We had simply to hem the police in as they 
stood at their corners, so that we could force them 
to listen to us. I was to stand in the middle holding 
the banner in front of me, and I was to begin the 
address. 

The policeman nearest to us was at the corner of 
Avenue Road in the St. John's Wood Road. We 
came down from Primrose Hill in a row, with the 
banner flying. We didn't mind the people stopping 
to stare after us. We were used to being stared at, 
even when we hadn't got the banner with us, because 
Aunt Lucy always dressed us in artistic style, and 
we were busy listening to Helen explaining to us 



12 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD 

exactly what to do. We took some copies of the 
paper with us, but the police were not to pay for 
them. 

Helen really thought that there might be some 
chance of our being arrested and dragged off to 
prison, but she said we were not to mind because 
other people had been through far worse. She said 
that the police did really sometimes go beyond their 
duty, but that we were in the right, and we ought to 
be ready to die if necessary. But in any case, there 
was not the slightest danger of our being executed 
or anything really serious. She herself wouldn't 
have minded being executed in the very least. She 
didn't say so, but I'm sure she wouldn't. She was 
very brave, although she had a cough, and was so 
thin and delicate. Once she cut her finger open and 
wrote a document in her own blood, swearing that 
when she was dead she would rise from the grave if 
it were possible and walk into our bedroom so that 
we might really know once for all whether it were 
possible for the spirit to exist without the body or 
not. Helen thought she was going to die quite soon 
because of her weak chest, and other people thought 
so too. But she wasn't at all frightened. She said 
it was absolutely the only way of finding out for 
certain several things she wanted to know. She was 
not religious. Once she put Mary's doll out on the 



SOCIAL REFORMERS 1 3 

bedroom window-sill in the soaking rain, and made 
us pray to God to keep it dry as a sign that He really 
did exist and was able to do anything He wanted. 
When we took it in the morning, you wouldn't have 
known it for the same creature. Helen said that it 
was a sure sign that there wasn't any God, because if 
there had been He would have been only too happy 
to have saved our souls by anything so simple. 
Mary nearly cried when she saw the sodden shapeless 
mass. But she stopped herself because she had 
really meant to offer it as a sacrifice. She thought 
it meant that there was a God and He had wanted 
to punish us for being so presumptuous and un- 
certain. Helen did not have dolls, or she would 
have used one of her own. We buried her document 
behind a loose brick in the old wall at the bottom of 
Acacia Road, and whenever we went past she made 
a sort of Freemason sign with her finger to show that 
she remembered it and was going to keep her vow. 

Mary was so frightened by what Helen had said 
about the executions that she had nearly begun to 
cry before we reached the bottom of St. Edmund's 
Terrace, which was quite near the first policeman. 
She was afraid we really might be executed by some 
mistake. She said that terrible mistakes were made. 
Once a poor man was hanged three times and nearly 
killed before they found out it wasn't the right man. 



14 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD 

If the rope hadn't broken they'd never have found 
out then. 

I felt sorry for Mary. She was small and fat and 
her face was broad. She often used to get anxious 
about things. She liked digging up remains in the 
back garden and wondering what they were. Once 
she dug up some bones and was certain they belonged 
to a victim who had been buried by a murderer, as 
you read about it in the paper. She was very 
frightened, but Helen said no, they were some 
chicken bones abandoned by the cat; and so they 
were. And she dug up a scrap of paper, and was 
sure she could see traces of a mysterious message 
written on it, but we couldn't see anything. We put 
it under the microscope, and there was nothing 
written on it at all. But she said she could see it, so 
she kept it. When she dug up an old piece of glass 
or tin she used to believe they were Roman remains, 
because she said she was sure it was the Romans who 
had begun to build the waterworks at the foot of 
Primrose Hill. She didn't believe it really, but she 
wanted to so much that she almost did. She wasn't 
very brave, and she used to cry a good deal because 
she was always being frightened by the grave things 
Helen talked about. 

Helen stopped short in the middle of the road and 
began to scold her. Her face was quite white with 



SOCIAL REFORMERS 1 5 

anger. She said, " Coward, coward, coward, only 
fit for nursing dolls and hemming pocket handker- 
chiefs." She said we must fight, fight, fight. All 
the great men and women in the world had lived 
fighting and died fighting. If we were afraid of a 
perfectly peaceful policeman now where should we 
be when the social revolution came ? 

She began to cough in the middle, and Mary gave 
way at once. Every one gave way to her when she 
began to cough, because it made them so sorry for 
her. It shook her so and made her look so thin 
and ill. 

I secretly hoped that the policeman would not be 
at his corner. But he was. He had just settled 
down in it again after a short walk to and fro. He 
wasn't going to move again just then. 

He was a very broad and tall policeman with a 
large head and fat red cheeks. His eyes were blue 
and turned up at the corners. They weren't bright, 
but they were very gay and kind. 

We stood in a row in front of him just as we had 
said we would. I held the banner with one hand 
and the papers with the other, so I felt that I was 
rooted to the spot. It was a horrid feeling. 

I fancy he must have thought us very small, 
because he stooped right down with a hand on each 
knee to look at us. He smiled right across his face. 



1 6 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD 

He was just like the giant in our picture book when 
he stooped down and looked at Jack and was thinking 
how glad he was that he was going to eat him. 

His face was quite near mine, and I felt sure that 
he was going to take a bite out of my cheek. But it 
was the banner that attracted him. He was trying 
to read what was pasted on it, but I knew he couldn't 
because some of the letters were turned the wrong 
way round, and they were a good many different 
sizes. 

He said, " That's a pretty thing you've got there ; 
what's writ across it ? " 

His voice was a little hoarse as though he used to 
have a sore throat rather often. I daresay it was 
ruined by standing in the damp. But he himself 
was not rough. 

I knew what I ought to say, but I couldn't think 
of it. It was because of the banner and the papers, 
and being rather near. If I could have run across 
the road and stood on the other side I could have 
explained quite well. 

I held up the literature and said, " Would you 
read the paper, please ? " 

This was stupid, because of course he wouldn't 
want to read the paper until he had had it properly 
explained to him. 

Mary's eyes and mouth were quite wide open, she 



SOCIAL REFORMERS 1 7 

was so frightened. Helen couldn't wait any longer. 
She was always impatient. She began to help and 
she did it beautifully. 

First, she pointed out each word on the banner 
with her finger and explained exactly what it meant, 
and the policeman was interested. Then she flung 
the hair back off her shoulder and put her hand on 
her hip. She always stood like that when she was 
giving explanations. Her face looked very affec- 
tionate and truthful, and her voice went up and down 
a little, something like Aunt Lucy's. She explained 
our whole programme from beginning to end, not 
only that part especially for the use of the police. 

She said there was no reason why policemen 
shouldn't have things just as nice as a king. They 
were both human beings. It was only just an 
accident that one had been born a king and the other 
a policeman. If the other had been born a king and 
the one a policeman nobody would ever have noticed 
the difference. A policeman was as good as any 
king, in fact, better, because he was honest and cheap 
and worked for his living, while a king was useless 
and expensive, and only kept for showing off. 

The policeman hitched up his belt with both his 
thumbs and said, " Ah, that's what they call Socialism, 
that is. What's yours is mine, and what's mine's 
my own sort o' business, eh ? " 



1 8 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD 

Helen said, " What is is everybody's," very gravely. 

" That'll want a deal o' putting straight, that will, 
if ever that comes in," said the policeman, and he 
hitched himself up all round again and stamped both 
his feet, first one and then the other. " That'll take 
a deal o' thinking of." 

" Well, but will you think about it ? " Helen said. 
Her face looked shining and transparent like the face 
of the little boy Christ talking to the old Jews in the 
picture in the Tate Gallery. 

" Ah, but it wants wiser heads than mine to think 
about it," said the policeman. " All the thinking I 
could do wouldn't make it come no clearer. You 
want a lot of learning to understand such things. 
People says one thing, and people says another, and 
from what I can hear they're all a-contradicting of 
'emselves and of each other. I don't take much 
notice of it." 

" Well, but will you read the paper ? " Helen said. 
" You'll find a lot about it there. I am sure it will 
be a help to you." 

" Will I read the paper ? " he said, " of course I 
will." And I gave him one and he took it in his great 
podgy hand and wrenched himself round and hoisted 
up his coat tails and rammed it down into his trousers 
pocket. Then he swung himself straight again, and 
bobbed up and down and jerked his knees in and out, 



SOCIAL REFORMERS 1 9 

and stooped again and touched my face with his first 
ringer. It felt just as big and heavy as one of those 
long leathery sausages we used to have for supper 
before the page-boy's mother came. 

" I never seen cheeks so red, nor yet eyes so blue," 
he said, " and what a lot of hair, as soft as silk. I 
reckon you don't like havin' that brushed out of a 
evenin' ! " 

I didn't know what to say. One never does when 
people make personal remarks. 

" I got a little lass your size," he said, " with hair 
that colour, and she makes a rare fuss when her 
mother puts it into papers of a evenin'." 

Ill 

Mary crept into my bed in the night. We had 
three beds in a row in the night nursery. She was 
quite cold and frightened again. She couldn't 
forget the poor man who had been hanged three 
times. But she said, " Don't tell Helen because 
she'll say * coward, coward, coward,' and I can't 
bear it." 

She simply worshipped Helen. She used to 
stand sometimes for a long time quite still behind her 
chair in the schoolroom when she was doing her 
lessons in the evening. Sometimes she would stroke 
her hair quite gently, and Helen would fling it back 



20 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD 

off her shoulder and flash round and say, " Oh, 
bother you ! " and Mary used to say, " I didn't think 
you'd feel it," and stand still again. When Helen 
wrote the bloody document about beyond the grave 
Mary cried because she couldn't bear to think that 
Helen might be going to die. Only she always said, 
" Don't tell Helen," because Helen would have 
scorned her for it. 

I tried to comfort her about the man who had been 
hanged three times. I said I'd make a poem about 
it, and she wouldn't be frightened any more when 
she saw it properly explained. The first verse came 
at once as soon as I began to think about it, 

" Three times, three times was he strung up, 
Three times, three times he fell, 
The minions of the law were there, 
The clergyman as well ..." 

I wrote poems about everything that interested me. 
I had a whole book full of them. Some were very 
sad, and some were cheerful. One began, 

" A bloody, bloody King thou wast ! " 
It was called " An Ode to King John," but Helen 
looked over my shoulder and put in " Or any King," 
in brackets. She was a dreadful enemy of kings. 
I wrote the ode after Aunt Lucy read us about how 
King John had tried to put out Prince Arthur's eyes 
in Shakespeare's play. 



SOCIAL REFORMERS 21 

When I thought of a new poem in the night I used 
to escape from the governess early in the morning 
and run down to my aunt's bedroom to tell her about 
it. I sat on a chair beside the dressing-table while 
she was twisting her hair up, in her petticoat-bodice 
in front of the glass. I recited the poem before it 
was written down. 

Uncle William would be in bed with his nice 
white nightcap on and the sheets up to his chin. 
He used to raise himself up on his elbow to listen, 
and he used to laugh and say, " Bravo, bravo, my 
little girl ! " 

And Aunt Lucy used to leave go of her hair and 
stoop down and kiss me and tell me what she thought 
about it. She always said at the end, " Write about 
everything that interests you, little dear, and if you 
can't write it in poetry, write it in prose." 

And I did. I wrote a book of stories besides, and 
a play in verse. But it hadn't enough incident in it 
to be acted. 

IV 

On Sundays we used to go to make propaganda in 
Hyde Park. Olive and Arthur took charge of the 
big banner, and we distributed the little banner and 
the literature among ourselves. We used to go by 
train and fold the banners up and put them in the 



22 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD 

luggage rack when we got in, and we sold the paper 
on the platform till the train came in. 

Olive wore a round black astrakhan cap, and a 
short black coat with astrakhan on the collar and 
sleeves, and a green skirt. She and Arthur both had 
auburn hair. Olive's nose was short and her face 
was very serious and covered with freckles. So was 
Arthur's, but they were more difficult to see on his, 
because it nearly always was rather dirty. 

Olive was of a worrying nature. She was always 
wondering whether we had mislaid one of the 
banners, or whether we hadn't given too much 
change when we were paid for the literature, or 
whether we weren't letting wrong ideas creep into 
the programme. She had quite a pucker in her 
forehead through always worrying so much. She 
said it made it worse because Arthur was no help to 
her in practical things. It wasn't that he wasn't 
keen, but he was so absent-minded. He used to 
forget all sorts of things. He very often forgot to 
wash himself and do his hair in the morning, and it 
wasn't that he didn't want to, because he didn't 
mind in the least when other people washed him. 
As a rule, when he was sent up to get clean before 
meals he did not come down again until he was 
fetched, and then he was still quite cloudy. If any- 
body wanted to take him out to lunch or tea, the only 



SOCIAL REFORMERS 23 

thing for them to do was to wash him themselves very 
carefully and keep tight hold of him till they started. 

He used to wander off in the most excruciating 
moments, just when the paper was going to press, 
and go into the day-nursery and make noisy experi- 
ments. He liked to fill a tin with gas and close it 
and hold it over a flame until the lid flew off with a 
tremendous bang, and once he blew his hair and 
eyebrows off by an experiment with gunpowder, 
which nobody ever knew how he got. Once we 
found him standing on the balcony with an experi- 
mented-upon umbrella in his hand. He said that 
when he jumped it would open and he would descend 
into the garden, like a parachutist from a balloon. 
But, if it hadn't opened, he would certainly have been 
killed. Olive was waiting in agonies in the printing 
room for him to finish off his leading article, because, 
although he was so unreliable, she didn't feel it was 
safe to do anything like that without him. 

He had a deep cracked voice, and a big forehead 
like his uncle's, the celebrated poet and painter, and 
round brown eyes that sometimes looked as bright 
as though they had a red light lit behind them. 
Sometimes he would stare in such a wild and in- 
terested way that you couldn't help looking round 
to see if anything was there, though you knew there 
could be nothing. 



24 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD 

Once Olive stationed him at Baker Street Station 
with a pile of the literature to sell, and when she 
came back in an hour to see how he was getting on 
she found him striding up and down the platform 
and talking to himself with the literature all hanging 
floppily over his arm. Of course, he hadn't sold a 
single copy. We used to meet him charging down 
from the top of Primrose Hill in his black ulster, 
with his hat over his eyes, brandishing a book, 
talking to himself, and waving his arms about like a 
madman. He was always reading. He read at 
meals, in the street, and in bed, and in his bath. He 
read very serious books, and Uncle William gave him 
a special key to the bookcase in the library where all 
his most precious ones were kept. He trusted him 
entirely, because they were the only things he never 
lost. His articles were the best in the paper. Once 
an important social reformer* came to the house. 
He wore a blue serge suit, and he had a great deal of 
fluffy grey hair standing up all round his head, and a 
frizzy beard, rather a flushed face, and a beautifully 
shaped nose. He stood upon the hearthrug and we 
all sat round and gazed at him in adoration. Arthur 
was especially introduced to him and he said, " I 
congratulate you, young sir, on a particularly clever 
piece of writing. ,, 

* William Morris. 



SOCIAL REFORMERS 2$ 

It was Arthur's article in the last number, and he 
asked if he would like to come and give a paper on 
the subject in his club at Hammersmith. Arthur 
would have agreed, but Aunt Lucy said " No," that 
he had still a great deal to learn himself before he 
could begin to think of teaching other people. 

He and Olive wrote a play in the correct Greek 
style, with a Chorus in white robes, waving long grass. 
It was acted in the drawing-room, and a great many 
people came to see it. We were the Chorus, and 
told the people exactly what was going on. Aunt 
Lucy made the robes out of butter muslin. She was 
the prompter and sat in the wings, but we really 
didn't want much prompting for Olive had rehearsed 
us all so carefully. 

Arthur was a youth who slew a loathsome monster. 
Aunt Lucy pulled it in on a thread from the other 
wings for him to rush upon. He stood in the middle 
of the stage with his foot upon its neck and slew it so 
fiercely that all the people were astonished and said 
that he would make a splendid actor. But it wasn't 
really acting. He simply was so absent-minded that 
he imagined that he really was the youth. He was 
in butter muslin too, but it was tied in round the 
waist. We made his sword out of cardboard and 
covered it with gold paper. He had on sandals laced 
with gold paper half-way up his legs, and a gold band 



26 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD 

in his hair. He had to let his hair grow long for 
some time beforehand, but he was glad because he 
hated going to the barber's. Olive was worried for 
fear he should split the laces of his sandals in his 
emotion, but luckily he didn't. The people in front 
said he scowled so savagely that his face looked quite 
terrible, and the perspiration poured off him with 
excitement. I quite believed it, for I knew how 
worked up he used to be when we met him in his 
ulster on Primrose Hill. 

Our banners were not so noticeable in the Park, 
because there were so many others there. There 
were some speakers called Iconoclasts, and some 
called Socialists, and some called Humanitarians, and 
some called Unitarians, and some called Vegetarians ; 
and they stood, each under their own banner, giving 
explanations. Some of the crowd stood and listened 
and groaned and clapped and hissed and asked ques- 
tions and made rude remarks, and some just walked 
about and took no notice. We planted our banner 
down near the Socialists as a meeting-place, and 
mixed with the crowd to sell literature and gather 
information. Olive told us if ever we met with 
anything of interest to jot it down with pencil in our 
note-books, and we did. If any one said anything 
very wise or noble we handed him a pencil and 
asked him for his autograph. I called out " The 



SOCIAL REFORMERS 27 

Torch/' " The Torch" to attract the people to the 
literature, and some mocking boys said it was like a 
mouse squeaking in the larder. People turned 
round and said, " What a funny little girl ! " and 
" Bless her, what has she got there ? " and they 
bought the paper just to see. Olive explained hard 
all the time she sold the literature. She wasn't 
upset at all even when quite a crowd came round her. 
She frowned and explained all the harder. They 
tried to get her in a corner, asking unfriendly ques- 
tions, but she was too clever for them, and besides, 
she had looked it all up beforehand, while they 
hadn't, and she had a lot of practice on us too. 
Arthur generally got lost at once and turned up when 
the Park was nearly empty, talking to somebody he 
didn't know. But he was not at all confused. 

We had a cigar box full of autographs of the 
speakers in the Park, and we used to rummage our 
fingers in them when we wanted inspiration. Once 
there was a very desperate and famous lady* there, 
and people said we should never be able to get her 
autograph, because she always refused to give it. 
But we thought we'd try. Olive went up to ask her 
first in case she wanted explanations, but a tall 
stooping gentleman in a foreign hat, with his hands 
behind his back and hair that flowed and mingled 
* Louise Michel. 



28 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD 

with his beard, whom she was talking to, stepped in 
front of her and said that " Madame " could not be 
disturbed. 

We gathered round the banner and considered 
what to do. Helen said that I ought to be sent 
because nobody was likely to take me for a spy. I 
went up to the lady and pulled her sleeve, and the 
foreign gentleman jumped forward again, and I was 
frightened. But she had turned round and seen me 
first, and she sat down in a chair behind her and 
pulled me up against her and asked me what I 
wanted. I told her, and she laughed and said, 
" What a rosy little girl ! " 

She was very thin, and she was dressed all in black. 
Her face had dry grey skin on it, and her hair was 
grey, and I thought she must be grey all over, under- 
neath her clothes as well. She had thin lips and a 
long pointed nose and little eyes. They were very 
bright and sharp, but not very kind. I said please 
was it really true that she had been in prison ? I 
thought that as she was a lady there might be some 
mistake. She said it was quite true, and what had 
little girls to do with things like that ? I said I was 
connected with a paper, and did she mind, and was 
she much afraid (when she was put in prison) ?■ Her 
face looked very brave, and she said she was never 
afraid, and that she minded nothing, because she 



SOCIAL REFORMERS 2C; 

knew that all the while the world was getting better, 
and that people would be cleverer and happier. She 
stroked my cheek and smiled again and asked me, 
did I understand ? And I said, " Oh, yes, that's 
what we think too " — after the Social Revolution. 
She asked me what my name was, and I said, 
" Poppy," and the foreign gentleman translated it 
into French, and she laughed again and said, " That 
is quite right ; thus it must be." I said, would she 
please be so kind as to give me her autograph, because 
my cousins wanted it badly. And she said, " Where 
are your cousins ? " and we looked round and we 
couldn't see them because they were out of sight 
behind the banner. They had promised not to peep, 
or I should have been too shy to ask her. She took 

my pencil and wrote L M right across the 

paper in long thick crooked letters. And I thanked 
her very much and said good-bye, and she took my 
face between her hands and looked at it and smiled 
and said, " Good-bye, nice little girl." And she 
looked after me till I had got right back to the banner, 
and then I looked round and she waved her hand to 
me and smiled again. 



CHAPTER II 

IN MY GRANDFATHER'S HOUSE 



MY grandfather lived in the house next door 
but one to us. He was the celebrated painter, 
F. M. B. # He was one of the kindest, gentlest, 
handsomest old gentlemen that ever lived. Every- 
body loved him. He wore a blue cloth tam-o'- 
shanter when he was at work, and in the winter sat 
with his legs in a big bag made of fur inside, like those 
worn at the North Pole. His cheeks were pink, and 
he had blue eyes, and his hair fell straight down on 
both sides of his face nearly to the bottom of his ears, 
and my grandmother cut it straight and even all the 
way round behind. It was wonderfully thick and 
pure snow white, and so was his beard. He wasn't 
very tall, but his shoulders were broad, and he looked 
somehow grand and important. He nearly always 
smiled when you looked at him, not an empty smile, 
but a kind, understanding one, though his eyes 
looked quite sad all the while. His lips jutted out 

* Ford Madox-Brown. 



I) 




Ford Madox- Brown 

After a drawing by his daughter, Mrs. Catherine Hueffer 



IN MY GRANDFATHERS HOUSE 3 1 

when he was thoughtful, something like Aunt Lucy's, 
and then they looked terribly stern. He usually 
wore a shiny top-hat and a black cape, and he used 
to take my grandmother's little dog out for a walk on 
Primrose Hill. He couldn't walk very fast, because 
he had the gout, but the little dog was very old and 
couldn't go fast either, so it didn't mind. He would 
stop from time to time and look behind to see if it 
was coming, and then it used to stop too, and sit down 
and look up at him and hang its tongue out and wag 
its tail, and they went on again. 

Sometimes he smiled a different sort of smile — his 
whole face looked as if it were laughing and his eyes 
as well. But that was very rarely. Once, when he 
was having breakfast with a good many people one 
of his letters said that two very important people 
were coming to see his last big picture before it left 
the house. He looked round the table and said, 
" That will mean quite an expenditure on red 
carpet." 

And then he smiled the second sort of smile. You 
felt just as if the sun had come out and begun to 
shine and made everything warm all of a sudden 
when you didn't expect it. Nobody could help 
laughing. I didn't know why he was so amused, 
but I knew he was, because he never smiled like that 
unless he had heard something really funny. 



32 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD 

When I told Helen she was very much upset. 
She kept popping up and down all through morning 
preparation time and couldn't do her lessons. At 
last she grabbed her tape-measure and ran out of the 
schoolroom and down the stairs into the hall, and 
she measured the whole distance right from the 
bottom of the stairs through the hall and down 
the front steps to the edge of the pavement to 
see how much red carpet would be needed. She 
was very angry. She said it would mean thirteen 
yards at least, and it must be five shillings a yard 
for a good quality. She couldn't bear to think 
that the important persons were going to have 
so much money spent upon them. But they got 
ill and didn't come after all, and it was a good 
thing they didn't, or they might have had a dreadful 
surprise prepared for them in the house next door 
but one. 

My grandfather told stories so well that some 
people said he did it better than anybody else in 
London, and you never got tired of them because 
they were a little different each time. When he told 
them in the studio he would walk up and down and 
wave his brush or painting-stick, and once at dinner 
he began to wave the carving-knife because he 
suddenly thought of a story just when he was carving 
the joint. There was an artist there, who was so 



IN MY GRANDFATHER S HOUSE 33 

hungry that he couldn't stand it any longer. So he 

made up a little verse and recited it aloud : 

" When B. carves 
Everybody starves." 

Then my grandfather remembered and gave him 
some meat. 

Sometimes he used to be very angry, though not 
seriously. When the cook sent up some nice 
pudding at dinner which he couldn't eat because of 
his gout he used to fly into a passion and bang his 
fists on the table and say, " Damn that woman, why 
does she always go on cooking things I mustn't 
eat ? " 

But the next minute he'd forget about it and smile 
at us all round the table as much as to say, " Aren't I 
silly to make such a fuss about a pudding ? " and as 
if he hoped we might all enjoy the pudding, although 
he couldn't eat it. He used to be angry too when 
he pushed his spectacles up on the top of his head 
and lost them. He would look for them all over the 
studio, and rummage for them on his great big table, 
and thump upon it angrily, because he said the 
housemaid must have moved them when she dusted 
it. But when I said, " Why, grandpapa, they're up 
on top of your head all the time," he used to smile 
at once and fetch them down and say, " Why, bless 
me, little pigeon, so they are." 



34 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD 

Once a gentleman came to the house to bring my 
mother some money from the Queen, because my 
father had died too young for her to have a pension 
and she was very poor. When my grandfather was 
told about it he flew into a frightful rage. We 
heard him quite plainly shouting in the studio, 
" Where are my boots ? " 

And he put his boots on and stumped down to the 
drawing-room where the gentleman was waiting, 
who was very much alarmed. And when my grand- 
father saw how nervous he was he was sorry for 
him. He refused to take the money, but opened 
the door for him quite politely, and said as he 
went out, " Tell Her Majesty my daughter is not a 
beggar." 

My grandfather always bought our paper — The 
Torch — and he agreed with us in almost everything. 
He hated tyrants and proud rich people. When we 
told him of something that tyrants had been doing 
he used to frown and look extremely fierce and say, 
" God bless us, the abominable villains ! " 

He asked us to tell him about everything, and we 
always did. He loved us all exceedingly, but he was 
kindest of all to me, because my father hadn't very 
long been dead. When I ran in to see him in the 
morning he used to say to me, " Little pigeon, little 
pigeon, you're looking very paintable to-day," and 



IN MY GRANDFATHER'S HOUSE 35 

would let me sit by him in the studio when he was 
working. 

He had a very large studio with a lot of pictures 
on easels in it, and a weak lay-figure with false yellow 
hair that was nearly always propped up behind the 
door. It had stupid round glass eyes that were 
always staring, and no expression at all in its face. 
It never stood quite straight because its joints were 
loose. The slightest jolt used to make it jump all 
over and stand in quite a different position. You 
looked at it one moment and its head was straight 
and it was looking in front of it with its arms folded 
as if it had settled down like that for the day, and 
when you turned round again it would be staring 
over its shoulder out of the window with one arm 
straight down and the other sticking out to one side. 
That was because a cart had gone past or some one 
had moved about in the room overhead. 

At night I used to fly past the studio, because I 
knew it was there behind the door ready to move in 
a moment, and when I was in the studio I used to 
turn round every minute to see what it was doing. 
I would not have kept it had I been my grandfather, 
but he did because it reminded him of one of his 
friends. 

He used to paint on top of a kind of square barrel. 
It had a big thick screw coming up out of the middle 



36 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD 

of it, and on the top of the screw there was a chair, 
and when you turned it round it went up and up till 
it seemed to be going right through the ceiling. 
My grandfather used to put his tam-o'-shanter on 
and climb on to the barrel off a small step-ladder and 
ask somebody to wind him up on the chair. That 
was when he was painting a very big and high picture. 
It stretched right across the longest wall of the 
studio and reached nearly to the ceiling. There was 
a regiment of soldiers in the picture, and a barge on 
a canal with a beautiful dark woman sitting in it, 
nursing twins. They were really only one baby, but 
when my grandfather had finished painting it in one 
arm the woman turned it over and held it in the 
other, and then he painted it as a twin. 

He would rather have had real twins, but the 
proper kind of baby was so difficult to find. He was 
very particular. First all the babies came in from 
the mews at the corner for him to look at. He was 
kind to them, but they did not please him because 
they weren't good looking, and their mothers were 
hurt and took them back again. We used to stop in 
the street and look at the nicely dressed babies in 
perambulators, but they were too refined. Then 
we went to a baby show in Camden Town, where a 
lot of women were sitting round the room on chairs 
with babies. Some were screaming and throwing 



IN MY GRANDFATHER S HOUSE 37 

themselves about, but some just looked on and took 
no notice. One lady in spectacles was weighing 
babies in scales, and the other was writing about 
them in a book. She was very pleased to see us, and 
she said, " Any of the mothers would be honoured 
and delighted." We went round looking at the 
babies, and the mothers were anxious and began to 
put their caps on straight and smooth their bibs and 
pull their dresses up to show how fat their legs were. 
But they weren't really very fat, because they were 
quite poor babies. But at last we found a very fat 
and red one sitting in a corner. It was fatter than 
any of the others, because a well-known lady writer 
had been kind to it and sent her milkman to its 
mother every day, so that it could have as much milk 
as it wanted. My grandfather said, " That's a 
remarkable baby," and it opened its eyes and mouth 
and stared, and the mother screwed up her face and 
was pleased and said, "I'm sure you're very kind," 
and jumped the baby up and down. And all the 
other mothers stared with their mouths open, but 
the babies themselves were not at all interested. 

The fat baby came next day in a mail-cart, and it 
was so fashionably dressed in white that it pricked 
you wherever you touched it because of the starch. 
It didn't cry when its mother left it in the studio, and 
she said that was the best of cow's milk from the 



38 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD 

first. When she had gone we took off its fashionable 
clothes and put them away in the cupboard very 
carefully, and we dressed it in a soft little petticoat 
with short sleeves and a little round cap that my 
mother used to wear when she was a baby. It 
turned its head round and opened its mouth and 
stared hard all the time, and seemed very much 
surprised, but it didn't mind. It was delightfully 
soft and slippery. There was a little girl in the 
picture too, with long golden hair, stretching up on 
tiptoe with her arms up begging her mother for a sip 
out of her glass of wine. I was the little girl, and 
when I got tired of stretching my arms up for the 
wine I had them held up on both sides of me, like 
Moses on the mountain when he was too tired to go 
on praying any longer. 

I used to sit on a footstool beside my grandfather's 
chair. He was very high and I was very low, and I 
used to draw faces on a piece of paper. But I had 
no talent. When the face seemed to me too ugly 
that I couldn't stand it any longer I used to look up 
and say, " Grandpapa it isn't coming nicely." 

And he would look down from his chair and say, 
" Isn't it ? Let me see what's wrong with it." 

And he used to wind himself down and take off 
his cap and push his spectacles on to the top of his 
head, while I stood on tiptoe and handed up the 



IN MY GRANDFATHER'S HOUSE 39 

paper for him to make corrections. He used to say, 
" Ah, you see, the nose turns up too sharply at the 
end," or " Lips don't twist up so tightly into one 
another as you've made them here," and he'd take 
the pencil and put it all straight in a moment, and 
make it quite a handsome, interesting face. I said, 
" Thank you, grandpapa, and don't forget that your 
spectacles are on top of your head again." 

All sorts of odd people used to come to the studio. 
Some were models and some were just visitors. 
The models were generally very proud of some part 
of their bodies. Some praised their shoulders, and 
some praised their feet. One lady said she had one 
of the most beautiful backs the sun had ever shone 
upon. She was most obstinate about it and didn't 
wish to go away. She said my grandfather couldn't 
help being delighted with her back if only she were 
allowed to take her clothes off. But she was not 
allowed to. Once an ambassador came to tea with 
a little dog under his arm, and said it would only 
drink milk with cream in it out of a china saucer. 
It was quite true, so that we had to send round to 
the dairy for some cream because there wasn't any 
in the house, and when Aunt Lucy heard of it she 
said that it was criminal extravagance. One ex- 
tremely dirty old man with very long hair and a 
white beard arrived in a hansom cab. He said 



40 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD 

that once he had washed and been painted as King 
Lear, but it didn't really pay him, because beggars 
were much more popular. As a matter of fact, he 
was not so vecy poor, but he kept himself dirty 
on purpose, in order to look like a beggar. He 
said, if the worst came to the worst he could 
always earn something as a blind man led by a boy 
outside the pits of theatres, though he was not blind 
at all. 

Once a poetess came to be painted by a long, 
nervous artist who was a pupil of my grandfather's. 
He wore very big spectacles because he was short- 
sighted, and he had a curious squeaky voice. His 
beard was not like an ordinary beard, but looked like 
separate tufts of hair pasted on all over his chin and 
beneath his nose. He was very excitable. Once 
when my grandfather was unable to get a suitable 
model for Sardanapolus, the artist dragged a barrel 
organ all the way home from St. John's Wood 
Station with the Italian organ-grinder running 
behind him and scolding indignantly, because he 
thought he would look so splendid as Sardanapolus 
lying on the sofa. The organ-grinder really was the 
right type, but he refused. He said that nothing 
should induce him to take off his clothes in such a 
climate, and that without music no Southerner 
could stand it. So he went away and wouldn't come 



IN MY GRANDFATHER S HOUSE 41 

again. My grandfather said he was sure it was 
because the man was frightened and thought we were 
all mad. 

The poetess* had curly black hair and a hooked 
nose, and rather a brown face. She put on a black 
velvet dress to be painted in, and held a big bunch 
of poppies in her hand. She quarrelled with the 
artist, and they made a great noise. She said he 
made her face look like a piece of gingerbread, and 
that the poppies were like dabs of scarlet flannel, and 
he said he had never been spoken to like that in his 
life before. They talked so loudly, and were so rude 
to one another, that my grandfather began to climb 
down from his painting chair to see what it was all 
about. And just when he had got up to the picture 
and was going to look at it the artist put his face 
down on his shoulder and burst into tears. Grand- 
papa said, " Be a man now, H., and control yourself," 
and was most kind and patient and tried to make 
them friends. But the poetess would not be recon- 
ciled. She cast a furious look at him and swept out 
of the room and collided with Aunt Lucy, who was 
coming up the stairs. Sometimes a crowd of 
fashionable people came all together to look at the 
pictures, and then my grandfather changed his coat, 
and that was called a " Private View." 
* Mathilde Blind. 



42 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD 

II 

I can't remember my grandmother's* face as 
plainly as most people's, though she had only been 
dead a short time then. She was very, very kind 
and gentle, and when she took me in her arms they 
were soft, and a sweet scent came from her shawl ; 
not like scent bought at shops, but like that of herbs 
and flowers growing in the country. She was so 
gentle that whenever she came into a room where 
people were quarrelling they stopped and behaved 
properly. It was said that when she was a baby 
lying in her cradle the ghost of a huntsman came 
into the room and picked her up and looked at her 
sadly and sighed and put her down again. She 
wasn't old and bent at all, but tall and straight, and 
her voice was so soft that sometimes you'd hardly 
know that she was speaking. She used to move 
about the house a great deal like Aunt Lucy,' but 
more slowly, and her skirts made a pretty sound when 
she moved. She often carried a little basket and a 
big bunch of keys in her hands. She used to go 
right down the stairs to the big storeroom next the 
kitchen, and I went in after her and sat down on a 
stool and watched her, and she would give me a stick 
of chocolate. When she moved from one shelf to 
another her dress made the nice sighing sound and 
* Mrs. Ford Madox-Brown 




1 









Mrs. Ford Madox-Brown 

After a pencil drawing by Dante Gabriel Rossetti 



IN MY GRANDFATHER S HOUSE 43 

smelt countrified even among all the cookery things. 
She was always taking care of my grandfather and 
trying to make people pleased and give them what 
they wanted. Once when she was young, and it was 
a very cold winter, and many men were out of work 
and their little children hungry, she turned her 
drawing-room into a soup-kitchen and made soup 
for them and fed them. She was quite poor then, 
and had to go without all sorts of things herself to 
get the money. Nothing ever made her angry. 
When my grandfather flew into a rage she used to 
smile and say, " Ford, Ford," and he was quiet at 
once, and began smiling. 

When she was ill she was sorry for giving people 
trouble and for making them run up and down the 
stairs. She used to say to me, " Thank you, little 
grand-daughter, and you must forgive me, for, you 
see, I'm ill. I shan't be able to get up any more and 
go down to the storeroom with you as I used to do." 

She used to make me sprinkle breadcrumbs on 
her window-sill for the little robin that came and 
looked in at her window every morning, and she 
said, " One day he'll come and look in like that, and 
I shan't be here." 

Once in the night, just before she died, when she'd 
forgotten all about the world already, she began to 
sing a song, but very gently, and my grandfather said 



44 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD 

her voice was just as sweet as when she was a girl 
and they used to sing it together. 

He was terribly unhappy when she died. He used 
to sit alone in the studio for hours together, doing 
no work at all. Once when I went in to him he 
turned round and looked at me with an odd far-away 
expression as if he didn't see me. I was surprised, 
and I ran to him and said, " Grandpapa, have you 
lost something ? " 

And he looked at me and smiled and said, " Oh, 
it's little pigeon. Yes, my little pigeon, yes, I have." 
He took me in between his knees and held me, and I 
climbed on to his lap and put my head on his shoulder, 
and we didn't move again till it was nearly dark. 

In the evening he used to wander up and down 
and in and out from room to room, as if he were 
looking everywhere to try and find my grandmother. 
One night I heard him coming down the stairs, and 
I was frightened because it was night and because 
I knew his face would look so sad and strange. I 
slipped into the dining-room and sat down behind 
the door. He came in and looked all round the 
room, but it was nearly dark and he didn't see me. 
Then he went out and into the drawing-room to look 
there too, then out again and up the stairs. I 
slipped off my chair and crept out into the hall to 
look, and when he was half-way up the stairs he 



IN MY GRANDFATHER'S HOUSE 45 

stopped and leant his head down on the bannisters 
and his shoulders moved up and down and he was 
sobbing. I went into the drawing-room because I 
thought there might be some one there. But there 
was nobody, and I went out into the hall again. 
The big clock in the hall was going tick, tick, as it 
always did, and the gas was turned low, and the 
beautiful gold paper on the wall looked dim. It was 
very still and lonely, and there were big shadows 
everywhere. A long way away down the stairs I 
could hear the servants laughing and having supper 
in the kitchen, but there was no other sound. My 
grandfather went on slowly up the stairs, and I went 
back into the drawing-room and lay down on the 
sofa in the dark and began to cry because I wanted 
to see my father and I couldn't, and because my 
grandfather was so unhappy, and because of all the 
kind dead people who used to be so loving and 
protecting. But, however much you want them 
and however much you cry, they'll never hear you, 
and they'll never come back again. 

Ill 

The kitchen was at the end of a stone passage at 
the foot of a flight of stone steps. I liked to go 
there, but I was not really allowed to. I liked it best 
of all in the evening when the servants had finished 



46 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD 

supper, and sometimes the cook would let me sit on 
a chair in the corner near the stove. She was rather 
an ill-tempered cook, though she often used to laugh. 
She had been in the family ever since my mother 
was quite a little girl. She had a dark yellow face 
and brown eyes and black hair. It was quite straight 
like tape, and she scraped it back from her forehead 
and did it in a funny knob behind. It wasn't black 
really, but she used an excellent hair dye, and said, 
what did it matter if it came off on the pillow-cases ? 
She said nobody need look their age if only they 
would take the trouble to look young. But she 
didn't look young herself, because she was so bony 
and her face so dreadfully wrinkled. She looked 
very nice though when she laughed and showed her 
false white teeth. They looked whiter than other 
people's false teeth, because her face was so yellow 
and her eyes so dark. Occasionally she flew into an 
awful temper and swore so dreadfully that it shocked 
every one who heard her. But at other times she 
was quite cheerful and told very funny stories. 

She had a treacherous friend who was a hunch- 
backed lady. They both loved the same gentleman, 
but he couldn't marry them because he had a wife 
already. The hunch-backed lady used to come in 
the evening and sit down in the kitchen and say how 
ill the wife was, and that she couldn't last much 



IN MY GRANDFATHER S HOUSE 47 

longer ; but she did. The hunch-backed lady said 
that as soon as she was dead the gentleman they loved 
would want to marry the cook, and that he really 
loved her much better than his wife. The cook 
believed it, and she said if he had only known his 
mind when they were young together all the bother 
would have been saved. 

The hunch-backed lady wore a woolly black cloak, 
and a big fur on her shoulders to hide the hunch, a 
black velvet bonnet with strings and sparkling jet 
ornaments, and an expensive gold watch-chain. 
She had a very heavy face with her chin right on her 
chest, and light blue eyes and a handsome curly 
fringe. She used to drink quantities of tea out of a 
saucer, very hot, but the cook said she really liked 
whisky much better when she could get it. 

Once she ceased coming and the cook went to look 
for her, and she found out that the wife had really 
been dead all the while, and the hunch-backed lady 
had got married to the gentleman they loved. He 
didn't want to be married, but she made him. She 
was afraid that if the cook had known his wife was 
dead she would have made him first. 

There was a page-boy in this house too, but not an 
anarchist. He wore no buttons, and he had to stop 
down in the kitchen and help the cook because of 
her " poor leg." 



48 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD 

She got it through going out to buy three pounds 
of fish at the fishmonger's and slipping on a piece of 
orange-peel outside the door. It used to give way 
just at the most awkward moments, and she said she 
almost believed it knew and did it on purpose. If 
she had a saucepan in her hand, or a piece of toast, or 
a leg of mutton, it was all the same — she had to put 
it down on the floor and clutch herself round the 
knee to pull her leg straight again. Everybody knew 
about it, and the first thing they said when they came 
into the kitchen was, " Good-morning, cook, and 
how's your poor leg ? " and then she told them about 
it. When she sat down the boy used to arrange a 
chair in front of her for her to rest it on. 

He had a fat, red face, and he was always smiling. 
The cook said she wouldn't have believed that any 
living mouth could stretch so far. It used to make 
people angry, because whenever they looked at him 
he smiled, even when there was nothing at all to 
smile at. My grandfather said he was like the man 
in Shakespeare who smiled and was a villain. He 
liked eating apples and a sweet-stuff called stick-jaw 
that glued his teeth together. The cook said he was 
the biggest liar that ever walked the earth. He 
always pretended he had a serious illness and he 
must go and see the doctor. But instead he went 
and played in Regent's Park. Once he tied his face 



IN MY GRANDFATHER S HOUSE 49 

up in a bandage for two days and said that he was 
going to the dentist to have a double tooth out. 
And he borrowed a huge cart-horse from one of the 
stables in the mews and went for a ride on it, without 
a saddle, and with an old piece of rope instead of 
reins; and that was how he got found out. The 
horse insisted on going past the house when it 
wanted to return to its stable. He tugged at it as 
hard as he could to make it go home round the back 
way, but it refused, and the cook was on the area 
steps and saw him. She said she wouldn't have 
been so certain if he hadn't had an enormous apple 
in one hand. When he came next day, he said it 
was the dentist's horse, and he had sent him for a 
ride on it to get rid of the effects of laughing gas. 
But we knew the very stable where it lived, and so 
he was dismissed. 

The housemaid was Irish, and she couldn't read 
or write, but she believed in ghosts. She had been 
a long time in the family too, and she was very fat, 
with a big pink face and little beady eyes. She was 
the kindest person I ever knew. Whenever we liked 
anything she had she always wanted to give it to us, 
and it really grieved her if we wouldn't have it. She 
gave away all her money to the beggars at the garden 
gate, and if she heard of any of us being ill or punished 
it made her cry, just as if she herself were in trouble. 



50 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD 

She used to fall about a great deal. If there was any 
place she could fall into she always did. She said 
she had measured her length upon every free space 
of ground in the house, and bumped her head on 
every stair, and caught her foot in every rug and 
carpet. But she didn't let it worry her. One night, 
when she was standing on the slippery little knob at 
the end of the bannisters to light the gas outside the 
studio door, she fell off and lay quite still with her 
leg doubled under her until the family had finished 
dinner, because she didn't want to disturb them by 
calling out. Once she fell into the drawing-room 
with a great big tea-tray when there was a tea-party 
and alarmed the guests exceedingly. But my grand- 
mother was not angry. She said nothing at all, but 
helped her to get up and pick the tea-things up 
again. 

She believed in ghosts most firmly. She said that 
her mother had seen so many in Ireland that she 
simply took no notice of them. They were in every 
room in the house and up and down the stairs. 
They used to ring the bells when nothing was wanted 
and knock people about when they got in their way, 
and whenever anybody died or anything was going 
to happen they made a horrible noise outside the 
windows in the night. Once, she said, she passed 
a woman nursing her own head on a stone by the 



IN MY GRANDFATHER S HOUSE 5 1 

roadside, and they just looked at one another, but 
neither of them spoke. 

A gentleman in a nightshirt had hanged himself 
from a hook in the middle of the ceiling in the 
servants' bedroom, before my grandfather came to 
the house, and the housemaid said his spirit haunted 
the top storey. She woke up one night and saw a 
figure standing in the middle of the room and looking 
at her. She knew it was the same gentleman, 
because he still wore his nightshirt and had the rope 
round his neck, and he was standing just underneath 
the place where the hook would have been had it 
not been taken down when the ceiling was white- 
washed. He was looking at her fixedly. If he had 
looked the other way he might have noticed the 
cook in the other bed as well, and that would have 
been some relief. But he didn't. He gazed and 
gazed as though his heart was going to break. She 
was so frightened that she shook the bed with 
trembling ; and she shut her eyes and put her hand 
under the pillow and got out her rosary, and said five 
" Hail Mary's." And when she opened them again 
he was still there, only not quite so solid. After 
another five he had got so misty that she could see 
the furniture through him, and after the third five 
he had disappeared. But she was so terrified, she 
said, that she didn't get a wink of sleep that night, 



52 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD 

and when she woke in the morning her nightdress 
and the sheets were quite damp with terror. 

The cook didn't believe it. She said it was pure 
popery. She was sure no ghost could possibly come 
in in the night like that without her noticing it, 
because she was such a light sleeper. But as a 
matter of fact, she snored so dreadfully that my 
grandfather once asked a builder for an estimate for 
padding the walls of the servants' room all round so 
that she couldn't be heard on the floor underneath, 
but she was so offended that it wasn't padded. 

They sometimes used to laugh at the housemaid 
in the kitchen for being a Catholic. But she didn't 
care. She stuck to her religion. She was so certain 
that the Virgin Mary was taking care of her, or she 
would have been worse hurt in the dreadful accidents 
she used to have. She said no living being could 
have stood it without Divine protection. When she 
was doing something that she thought really might 
be dangerous, she just said, " Jesus, Mary, Joseph, 
help ! " and took more care, and nothing happened. 

The cook said why she didn't like Catholics was 
because she thought they were wicked for burning 
the Protestants alive on posts in the streets in the 
olden days when there were no police. I said that 
the Protestants burnt the Catholics first, but she was 
offended. She said that no Protestant would ever 



IN MY GRANDFATHERS HOUSE 53 

have thought of such a thing if it hadn't been put 
into their heads by bad example. They argued so 
angrily about which burnt the other first that the 
housemaid put her apron over her head and sat down 
on a chair and began to cry aloud like the Irish do at 
funerals. But then she left off and went upstairs to 
do her work, and she tumbled about so badly in the 
bedroom over the studio that my grandfather got 
down from his painting chair to go upstairs and see 
what the matter was, and when he found out why 
she was crying he was very angry. He stumped 
right downstairs to the top of the kitchen flight with 
his spectacles on top of his head, his palette in one 
hand and his paint-brush in the other. It was 
difficult for him to get downstairs because of his 
gout. But he did, and put his head over the 
bannisters and forbade the subject ever again to be 
mentioned in the kitchen. And it was not, and they 
were quite good friends again after that. 

The person who most hated Catholics was Mrs. 
Hall, the wife of the most pious cabman in the mews 
at the corner. She was the beautiful woman who 
sat in the barge and nursed the healthy baby that had 
been painted as twins. She was so beautiful that it 
was quite remarkable. Her hair was jet black, and 
when one day she sat down in a chair in the kitchen 
and let it down for us to see it trailed upon the floor. 



54 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD 

Her eyes were dark blue and extremely big and 
bright, but the doctor said that the brightness was 
unnatural, and that later she might go blind. She 
was very tall, and wherever she stood she used to 
look strong and composed and like the statues that 
stand round on pedestals in museums. Her husband 
used to say God punished her for her sins by not 
giving her a baby. 

The husband went to a chapel where any one who 
liked could get up and preach, and the others were 
obliged to listen. He preached every time he got a 
chance, and he said he never felt inclined to stop. 
He loved his fellow creatures so much that he felt 
compelled to save their souls. He always carried a 
bundle of tracts about in his pocket, and when any 
one paid him his fare he gave them some free of 
charge in exchange. My grandfather used to say to 
him, " It's no good, Hall, I'm past all redemption," 
because he didn't want the tracts, but Mr. Hall 
stuffed a bundle into the pocket of his overcoat while 
he was helping him to get out of the cab. Mrs. Hall 
said that he wrestled with God for his soul in private. 
They were allowed to do that at his chapel. 

He was so religious that he thought both Catholics 
and Protestants were wicked. He said the mistake 
that everybody made was to think there was more 
than one door open into Heaven. He said, " Is 



IN MY GRANDFATHER S HOUSE 55 

there more than one door open into Heaven ? No ! 
And why is there not more than one door open into 
Heaven ? Because if there was more than one door 
open into Heaven there would be a draught in 
Heaven. And would the Lord tolerate a draught in 
Heaven ? No ! " That was part of one of his 
sermons. It really meant that it was only the door 
of his chapel that led into Heaven, and that other 
people hadn't got a chance. 

Some people said he was a handsome man, but I 
didn't think so. He was small and his hair was such 
a bright yellow that it looked as if it had been painted. 
He had strawberry-coloured cheeks and his nose was 
deadly white. Whenever he met a very nice young 
girl he used to take her to a prayer-meeting, because 
he loved her soul. He knew a great many. His 
wife was angry because he took so much trouble 
about their souls, and the more he loved them the 
more she hated them. She used to cry and tell the 
cook which particular one he was saving then, and 
the cook used to say, " The saucy hussy ! Td save 
'er, and 'im too ! " 

Mrs. Hall cried a lot too, because she hadn't got a 
baby. 

Once when she had been sitting to my grandfather 
and nursing the baby that had been made into twins 
for the picture she came into the kitchen, put her 



56 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD 

head down on the side table where all the dirty 
dishes were, and cried so bitterly that her shoulders 
kept heaving up and down, and part of her hair 
came undone. She said, " It's the feel of it in your 
arms and then having to give it up again ! " 

She meant the nice warm wriggly feeling the baby 
had when we undressed it, because it was so fashion- 
able. I had noticed it too. She said, "If only I'd 
had one like that I might have kept him." 

And the cook said, " Was he out again last night, 
then ? " 

And she nodded her head and began to cry worse 
than before. 

The cook was very angry. She said he ought to be 
ashamed of himself with that nice, beautiful bed and all 
that any man ought to feel proud and glad to sleep in. 

I thought at first she meant the baby, but it was 
the husband they were speaking of. It was true 
that he had a beautiful bed, because I once went up 
into the room over the stable and saw it. It was all 
hung with white muslin and decorated with big blue 
bows like a cradle when the baby is a boy. It had a 
piece of lavender under each pillow (Mrs. Hall lifted 
them up to show me), and " Welcome ! " pasted up 
on the canopy in big gold letters. The room was 
full of photographs, and they were all of Mr. Hall in 
different sizes. There was a big black and white 



IN MY GRANDFATHER S HOUSE 57 

picture of him over the mantelpiece, and then they 
grew smaller and smaller, and the smallest of all was 
on a chain round Mrs. Hall's neck. 

Mr. Hall used to want to save the parlourmaid too, 
but she didn't want to be saved. She objected so 
strongly that she said she'd box his ears if he 
attempted it. So he gave it up. 

She was a very tall girl with a big chest and great 
strong arms. She came from the country. Her 
skin was something the colour of the paler sort of 
olives, and her hair was black. Her eyes were a 
peculiar kind of mixture of dark green and red, and 
her eyebrows were so thick and dark that they 
looked like two straight strips of black velvet above 
her eyes. When she was angry she frowned, and 
then they joined together and looked like one strip. 
Her real name was Amelia Parkes, but in the kitchen 
they called her Milly, and when she had once got to 
the top of the kitchen stairs she was called Parkes. 

She was engaged to marry a horribly cross old 
greengrocer who lived in Henry Street. She didn't 
want to, but she said she was obliged to in order not 
to bring disgrace upon her family. I didn't under- 
stand why. She used to cry a great deal about it, 
so that her eyes were always swollen, but she never 
let anybody see her cry. She did it in the night. 

The man she really loved was called Tommy 



58 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD 

Haughty. He was the cabman who lived in the last 
house but one in the mews. He was a huge and 
friendly young man with dimples and the kindest 
face imaginable. When we heard a cab come 
rumbling up the mews we used to say, " I wonder if 
it's Tommy Haughty," and hope it was, because he 
always looked so cheerful. When he went past the 
house he used to stand up on his box and look down 
the area to see if Milly was in the kitchen, and if she 
was they used to smile at one another, and then you 
saw his dimples quite plainly. 

But once he stopped coming past the house any 
more. We used to watch for him, but he always 
turned his horse the other way and went down 
Ormonde Terrace. That was after Milly became 
engaged to the greengrocer. She didn't say any- 
thing, but whenever we heard a cab come up the 
mews she used to turn her back to the window and 
stand in front of the dresser quite quietly without 
moving. Once the housemaid went into her bed- 
room in the night and found her sitting up in bed in 
the moonlight with her hair hanging down, crying 
bitterly. She put her arms round her and tried to 
comfort her, and all Milly said was, " I don't know 
how I came to do it." 

And the housemaid said, " Do you love the other 
so, then, Milly ? " 



IN MY GRANDFATHER S HOUSE 59 

And she said, " He's been so good to me," and 
cried worse than before. 

The housemaid told my grandfather about it the 
next morning, and he called Milly into the studio 
and tried to persuade her not to marry the green- 
grocer, but she wouldn't listen. He said it's wrong 
and foolish to marry one man when you love another 
so badly that you can't sleep for crying. But it had 
no effect upon her. 

So he and the little dog walked down into Henry 
Street to see the greengrocer and ask him to treat 
her kindly when they were married. And the old 
man made his eyes quite narrow and looked him 
straight in the face and said, " What has it to do with 
you ? " and my grandfather came back and said he 
was a hardened villain. 

One night just before Milly was married Tommy 
Haughty 's mother came to see her in the kitchen, 
and they quarrelled. She was a little, quick, clean 
woman, with tiny grey eyes as round as farthings. 
Her nose turned straight up out of her face and had 
no bridge at all, and it was quite red at the tip. But 
she was very tidy. 

She said it was all very well to say it was her fault, 
but she was a respectable hard-working widow, and 
she didn't want her son bringing soiled goods into 
their home. She said he was a lad that any mother 



60 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD 

might well be proud of, and he'd never spoke a 
rough word in his life, God bless him, and that 
though she said it, he was one that could pick and 
choose where he pleased. 

Milly was angry. She told her she wanted nothing 
to do either with her or her son, and had asked 
nothing from them. She said, "I'm going to 
marry the old devil to please myself, so set your mind 
at rest on that score.' ' 

Tommy Haughty's mother was so excited that she 
seemed to keep fizzing up all over her body and 
simply couldn't be quiet. She said that some 
people didn't know when they had fallen low enough, 
and give themselves airs when they ought to be 
thankful when a respectable married widow wasn't 
too particular to sit in the same room with them. 

Milly kept her temper better. She said, " Go 
home and tell your son what you've been saying to 
me if you're not afraid to." 

Tommy Haughty's mother fell in a violent temper. 
She began to talk very loudly, and she said, "I'm 
not afraid of my son or of an old man's love-light 
either. If the old fool had got any sense he'd pass 
you on to the next man willing to take you. And let 
me tell you this. My son's glad to be well rid of a 
bad bargain. He says it's lucky he's been spared 
from taking up another man's leavings." 



IN MY GRANDFATHER'S HOUSE 6l 

Then Milly got into a temper too. She stood up 
and folded her arms on her chest and pulled her 
eyebrows together, and said, " You lie, you old 
beast. Your son would take me now and thankful, 
if Fd let him." 

She looked so tall and angry that Tommy Haughty's 
mother was afraid. She kept staring at her with her 
tiny little eyes. They looked as if they were trying 
to burst out of her head. And Milly said, " Them 
as tells lies can't believe them as tells the truth, so 
Fll show you that I'm not a liar like you." 

And she put her hand into her bodice and took 
out a letter and flung it on the table, and said, 
" There, that's the letter I had from your son this 
morning." 

Tommy Haughty 's mother left off staring at Milly 
and stared at the letter instead. She was awfully 
surprised and frightened. She put out her hand to 
take it, but Milly jumped at her and said, " No, don't 
you touch it. You're not fit to." 

And she picked it up and opened it. But then she 
stood and looked at it without speaking for such a 
long time that we thought she wasn't going to read 
it. But at last she did, only not very loudly. It said, 
' I love you, Milly, just as I did before. You 
haven't been true to me, Milly, but I've been true 
to you. If you'll have me now I'll do what's right 



62 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD 

by you. And I'll do what's right by the child that's 
coming, Milly. I like the mother and I'll like the 
child as well. ..." 

She didn't read any more, but there was some 
more. She kept on standing there, and then she 
said in a low voice, " I wouldn't have let you hear 
it, only for the things you'd have said about me 
afterwards." 

She held out the first page of the letter for the 
cook to see, so that they'd know she had been reading 
what was really written in it, and then she put it back 
in her dress again. And she said in the same low 
voice, " That's how he treats ' soiled goods.' " 

Then she was quiet again, and then she said, " I 
know as well as you do that * soiled goods ' aren't fit 
for him. Do you think it's your dirty tongue that 
stops me ? " 

After that they were all quiet for a little time and 
Tommy Haughty 's mother began to fasten up her 
bonnet strings, and she said, " Well, I'll be going," 
just as if she'd only come to supper and hadn't been 
quarrelling at all. And she went away without 
saying good-night to any one. 

The next day I saw Milly at the pillar-box near 
the house posting a letter. She had on all her nice 
white frills and apron-strings, and she looked very 
clean and pretty. She kissed the envelope before 



IN MY GRANDFATHER'S HOUSE 63 

she put it in the letter-box, and then she stood still. 
I ran up to her and said, " Was it for Tommy 
Haughty, Milly ? " 

And she said, " Yes, Miss Poppy." 

We took hands and walked back towards the 
house, and I said, " That was why you kissed it, 
wasn't it, Milly ? " and she didn't answer for a 
minute, and then she said, " Yes, Miss Poppy." 

And I said, " Wouldn't you rather marry Tommy 
Haughty than that horrid dirty old greengrocer, 
Milly ? " 

Then she was silent for such a long time that I 
thought she wasn't going to answer, but she did and 
said, " Yes, Miss Poppy." 

And after a minute she turned her face away and 
began to cry and wipe her eyes, and that was the only 
time that anybody saw her crying in the daytime. 

The kitchen was really pleasantest of all in the 
evening when they were resting after supper. Some- 
times there were quite a lot of people there. The 
charwoman used to unscrew her wooden leg and 
lean it up against her chair. She said you couldn't 
think what a relief it gave her. But, of course, if 
she'd had to get up suddenly for anything before 
she'd had the time to screw it on again she would 
certainly have fallen. The cook had her leg up on 
the chair in front of her and they talked about them 



64 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD 

But the charwoman talked most. She was a middle- 
sized woman with greasy greeny-greyish hair, and 
there always seemed to be perspiration on her face. 
She talked whatever she was doing. She talked so 
much that people could never understand how she 
got through all the work she did. At first it was 
disturbing, like rain pattering on a roof, but after a 
time you wouldn't notice it. 

She said that her husband and her husband's 
mother and her husband's father had all got wooden 
legs. She said that it was fate, and when the doctor 
in the hospital had told her that her right must go 
it was hardly any shock to her. She had a little girl 
called Sarah, and whenever she had anything the 
matter with her the first thing she always did with 
her was to test her legs at once. Even if it was only 
a cold or something wrong at quite another end of 
her body she always did. The housemaid said that 
it was tempting Providence to talk like that, but she 
didn't care. 

She talked most of all with Mrs. Catlin, the woman 
who did fine needlework and used to make my 
grandfather's shirts. She was a caretaker in one of 
the great big houses in Ormonde Terrace, and she 
used to look so young and innocent that everybody 
called her the " little woman," when she wasn't 
there. When she had finished some work she used 



IN MY GRANDFATHER'S HOUSE 65 

to bring it round in the evening after her babies were 
in bed, and then she'd stand near the dresser and 
talk, but she never sat down round the table with 
the others. She was rather plump and she always 
looked pink and clean as though she'd come straight 
out of a bath. She had nice fluffy fair hair and blue 
eyes, and her nose turned up just a little at the end, 
but gently and not suddenly like Tommy Haughty's 
mother's. She talked a good deal too, but she had 
a pretty tinkling voice. She said when you'd been 
shut up in a great big barracks of a place the whole 
day long you simply must let loose or burst. Some- 
times she and the charwoman talked both at once 
for a long time. They seemed not to hear at all what 
the other said, but it made no difference. Cook 
said it was like pandemonium in a hailstorm when 
those two got together. 

The little woman liked to talk about her husband 
in the lunatic asylum. He had been there three 
years and she went to see him every week and took 
him something tasty in a basket. He didn't know 
her, and it used to make her cry. She said it was 
like being married to a motherless infant. She 
thought that lunatics were most peculiar people. 
She said that one who lived in the asylum where her 
husband was got up the chimney and was pulled 
down by the leg, and flung his arms around the 



66 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD 

nurse's neck, and then walked round the room 
turning all the pictures with their faces to the wall. 
She told a very sad story about a poor man who had 
been sent for to clean the windows of the asylum, 
and when he looked through into the room he could 
see his own wife sitting melancholy-mad in an arm- 
chair. The tears rolled down his face when he saw 
her, and he might have fallen off the ladder, and if he 
had there would have been a whole family of little 
children left fatherless ; but he didn't. The woman 
used to sit all day long in an armchair, staring at the 
fire and taking no notice of anything, and when 
anybody spoke to her she used to look up and say, 
" Eh ? Oh, yes," and then go on staring at the fire 
again. When they brought her little new baby to 
see her she just stroked its cheek and smiled, but 
she didn't know who it was and wouldn't make 
friends, and just looked at the fire again. But at 
last, one day, she suddenly noticed the nurse making 
a bed, and all of a sudden she got up and said, " Oh, 
nurse, how lazy of me to be sitting here doing 
nothing and you with all that work to do." And she 
helped her make the bed and went on doing lots of 
other work, and the doctors said she was cured, and 
she went home to her husband and children. The 
little woman cried when she told the story, and said 
it was the thought of them blessed innocents in 



IN MY GRANDFATHER'S HOUSE 67 

their mother's arms again. She was very tender- 
hearted. 

The cook used to say to her, " And how's the 
policeman, Mrs. Catlin ? " 

And she used to blush and say, " Now, cook, don't, 
now ! " 

I knew the policeman they meant. He was a big 
and handsome policeman, and I saw him handing 
parcels to her down the area in Ormonde Terrace. 
She looked like a clean, rosy apple in a coal-scuttle, 
in the bottom of the big, dark area. 

One night when they were teasing her because 
the policeman was so loving she nearly cried and 
said, " Well, now, can you blame me, now ? He's 
that kind to my children, and it's that lonely in that 
great big gloomy barracks of a night " 

And then suddenly she stopped short as if she 
oughtn't to have said it, and looked ashamed, and 
nobody spoke till the cook said, " Well, Mrs. Catlin, 
so it's come to that then ! " 

And Mrs. Hall was offended, but I didn't know 
why. But the others laughed and the little woman 
held her head down. 

Then the husband died and she married the 
policeman, and not long afterwards she came to see 
us all dressed in black crepe and with a nice new 
baby in her arms. She cried a great deal about her 



68 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD 

husband, but she adored the baby. It really 
belonged to the policeman, but I didn't ask where 
he had kept it up till then. 

IV 

Not long after that something so terrible happened 
that I think I shall never forget it as long as I live. 
My dear grandfather died. He had only been ill a 
few days, and his illness began on the very night he 
finished the big picture. There was a nurse in 
uniform in the house and doctors drove up to the 
door in carriages. They wouldn't let me see him, 
though I begged to be allowed to, and the nurse said 
that he probably would not know me. But I could 
not believe that, I was sure she said it only because 
she didn't want to let me in. I used to wait outside 
the door because I thought I might be able to slip 
in when she wasn't looking, and I felt certain that if 
once he only saw me there he would never let them 
turn me out again. But one night when the nurse 
went downstairs for something I slipped up the 
stairs to his bedroom door. I listened for a moment 
outside, but I could hear nothing. Then I turned 
the handle very gently and went in. 

He was lying in the bed and there was a lamp 
burning on the table near him. He lay so still that 
at first I thought it must be a stranger there, and I 




I^JP 



'*$$ 



Ford Madox- Brown, on his death-bed 
"Drawn by candle-light with an aching heart" 

By Frederick Shields 



IN MY GRANDFATHER'S HOUSE 69 

was afraid and felt inclined to run away. But then 
I saw his hand twitch slightly and I wasn't afraid 
any longer. 

I crept up to the bed and looked at him. I didn't 
wish to wake him, but I was so eager to see him. 
He was lying on his back with the clothes right up 
to his chin, and his beard was spread out over the 
sheet. His hands were folded on his chest. 

His face looked intensely proud and lonely. It 
seemed to have changed somehow, and to be made 
of some cold and hard material, with deep new lines 
carved all over it. His white hair was spread out on 
the pillow and, as I looked at him, I remembered the 
picture of a great, stern snow-mountain lying all 
alone that he had once shown me. 

I was going to creep away again because I was 
afraid of waking him, but all of a sudden he turned 
his head towards me and opened his eyes and looked 
at me. It startled me, because he did it so quickly 
and quietly and I didn't expect it. But I was glad, 
and I said, " Grandpapa." 

But he went on looking at me as though he didn't 
see me, and he didn't smile. And suddenly he said 
quite quietly, " I'm sorry, I don't know you," just 
as coldly and politely as if I had been a grown-up 
visitor come to look at the pictures, and he turned 
his head away. 



70 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD 

But I said, " Grandpapa/' again. I felt I was 
going to cry, but I didn't, and he turned round and 
smiled just a little and said, " Ah, little pigeon." 

But then he turned his head away and forgot again. 

I stood quite still. I felt dreadfully unhappy. 
It was the first time in my life that he hadn't seemed 
glad to see me. I felt that it would kill me if he 
didn't say one kind, loving word to me. It was 
terribly lonely. The wind was howling outside, but 
it was quite quiet inside the room. 

Then my grandfather said, without turning his 
head, " The Guy Fawkes boys were making just 
such a noise outside the windows as they're doing 
now on the night when your brother Oliver died." 

And then he began to say, 

" Please to remember 
The fifth of November ..." 

And then he laughed a little, very low, a peculiar 
dreadful laugh, as if he didn't know that he was 
laughing. And I said, " Grandpapa, my Oliver 
isn't dead at all. It was your own boy Oliver who 
died on Guy Fawkes' night." 

I felt again that I was going to cry, because he was 
making such a strange mistake and because he 
laughed like that. I knew it was his own boy who 
died on Guy Fawkes' night because my mother had 
often told me the story. 



IN MY GRANDFATHER S HOUSE 71 

He had loved his son Oliver so intensely that he 
had never forgotten him for a moment since his 
death. It made it all the worse because he would 
not believe at first that his boy was ill and said that 
he was lazy. And after he was dead they found a 
number of medicine bottles in his cupboard, and 
discovered that he had been trying to cure himself 
alone. But it was no use. 

My grandfather kept all the pictures he had 
painted and all the books he liked to read in a little 
room next his own, and it was called " Oliver's 
room." He had the key in his pocket, and he used 
to go in all alone and touch the things and look at 
them. Sometimes he took my hand and let me go 
in with him. 

When they were going to bury his boy and all the 
carriages were waiting, he called my mother and my 
grandmother to him and forbade them to shed a 
single tear. He said, " This is the funeral of my 
son and not a puppet-show." 

And they were so frightened because he looked so 
stern and dreadful that they dared not cry, and my 
grandmother trembled so that my mother had to 
put her arm round her to hold her up. And he 
walked downstairs to where all the people were 
waiting with his head straight up as if he cared 
nothing. But it was really because, if he had heard 



72 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD 

Oliver's mother crying at his grave it would have 
sent him mad. 

But it was all so long ago I thought perhaps he 
had forgotten, and I said, " Grandpapa, don't you 
remember that it was your own boy who died on 
Guy Fawkes' night ? " 

And then he turned his face right round again and 
looked at me. And this time he smiled his own old 
smile, but the one that made his eyes look sad, and 
his face seemed somehow to melt a little and turn 
into soft, rosy flesh again. And he said, " My own 
boy ? " 

And he kept on looking at me and smiling kindly 

just as he used to do when I said something that 

pleased him very much. And I felt very happy. I 

was just going to say, " Grandpapa, do you feel well 

now ? " when all of a sudden his face seemed to die 

away and grow hard again, and he turned his head 

away and forgot. And I could hear him saying 

very low, 

" Please to remember 
The fifth of November 

And then he went to sleep and didn't move again. 
I waited a little, and then I crept out of the room and 
went downstairs and cried because he had not really 
been glad to see me. 

And one night, a little while after that, the doctor 




Oliver Madox- Brown 

(on the night after his death) 

After a drawing by Ford Madox-Brown 



IN MY GRANDFATHER S HOUSE 73 

was sent for and people kept running up and down 
the stairs and everybody looked frightened. The 
cook was sitting in the hall crying because some 
newspaper reporters kept ringing at the bell to know 
if F. M. B. had passed away yet, and one of them 
offered her five shillings secretly if she would tell 
him before the others. 

My grandfather was dead. Next day when I went 
out I saw on the placards, " Death of F. M. B.," and 
I stood and stared at them. I didn't cry because I 
couldn't believe that the dead man was really my 
dear grandpapa, who had always been there in the 
studio winding himself up and down in the screw- 
chair, and calling me " little pigeon," and loving me. 
It seemed to me somehow that even the newspaper 
boards would pity me and say something kind to me 
if it were really he, and not look so dead and hard as 
if they cared nothing for either of us. 

But when I went back again, and the studio was 
empty, and the screw-chair was turned round to the 
ladder just as he had left it when he last climbed down, 
and his cap and spectacles were lying on the table 
where he had put them that night when my mother 
helped him upstairs to bed because he was so tired, 
and he had said to her, " Well, my dear, my work's 
done now " — then I cried. 



CHAPTER III 
I 

THE CONVENT 

SOON after my grandfather was dead I went 
to school in a convent. I had some relations 
who were Roman Catholics, and they were very 
pious. They were so religious that they believed 
that every child who wasn't baptised in the proper 
way would go to hell and burn for all eternity when 
it was dead. They didn't wish me to be burnt like 
that, although they really didn't know me very well. 
They thought I might have a chance of being properly 
baptised and going to heaven if I went to school in a 
convent. And so I did. 

It was a big red building with a number of windows 
and a green square in front of it. It had an arched 
door like a church door with a nicely polished brass 
plate in the middle with the name of the convent on 
it in black letters. The bell hung down at the side 
on a chain, and just above the brass plate there was 
a little square grating with a tiny window behind it. 
When anybody rang the bell a nun opened the 



THE CONVENT 75 

window and looked through the grating to see if it 
was a respectable person ringing. If it was, she 
opened the door ; but if it was a person who didn't 
look respectable, like a thief or somebody with a bad 
character, she went to ask permission before she let 
them in. 

Inside the door was a wide corridor with a tiled 
floor and windows on both sides, and on the right a 
big door that opened into the chapel. The corridor 
led into other corridors, and large class-rooms opened 
out of them on either side filled with desks and maps 
and pictures. Upstairs there were more corridors 
with tiny bedrooms for the boarders opening out of 
them. In each room there was a crucifix over the 
bed and a shell full of holy water. When the nun 
came to wake you in the morning she stood by the 
bed and held out the shell of holy water, and (if you 
weren't a heretic) you were supposed to dip your 
fingers into the water and make the sign of the cross 
to show that you were thoroughly awake. If you 
were a heretic, she simply said " Good morning." 
When you got out of bed another nun came in and 
brushed and combed your hair. That part was the 
same whether you were a heretic or not, but if you 
weren't you went into the chapel to hear mass as soon 
as you'd finished breakfast. 

The chapel was very pretty with a quantity of blue 



76 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD 

and gold paint about it. There was a statue of the 
Virgin Mary on the right-hand side of the altar, and 
she was in blue and gold as well. She had a pink- 
and- white looking face, and her eyes were made of 
glass, like a doll's. She wore a blue dress and a gold 
crown in her hair and held a dear, loving little baby 
in her arms, with a blue frock and gold hair. She 
appeared to take no notice of it, but stared straight 
in front of her with her eyebrows lifted as if she were 
extremely surprised at something. St. Joseph, her 
husband, was standing on the other side of the altar 
in a handsome blue gown all covered over with 
golden stars, and held a golden crook in his hand. 
His eyes were brown, and he didn't look so surprised 
as the Virgin Mary — only dogged. There were 
some other saints round the sides of the chapel, but 
they weren't nearly so well dressed. 

Over the altar there was a beautiful portrait of 
Mary Magdalene, who was wicked once but got 
better later on. She had on a blue dress too, and 
her hair was golden, but not tidily kept like the 
Virgin Mary's. It fell down all round her right to 
her feet and looked as bright as if it had just been 
washed and combed out. Her face was pale and 
sad and lovely. I liked her better than the Virgin 
Mary. I thought she looked as if she had a much 
better character. But, of course, she hadn't. She 



THE CONVENT 77 

was very bad until she was converted, and then she 
tied her hair up and was sorry for her sins. 

There was a big crucifix in the chapel, and a long 
picture of the twelve apostles all standing in a row 
with their feet in sandals and on clouds. They had 
brown dresses on and ropes round their waists, and 
gold halos on the back of their heads to show how 
saintly they were. Their faces were nearly all 
painted alike, except for hair-dressing, because there 
were no pictures or photographs in those days to go 
by, but if you wanted to know which was which you 
looked at their names, which were written in gold 
letters underneath the clouds. 

There were a lot of big, expensive candles on the 
altar to show respect to God, and down near the 
altar rails there was a sort of upright candelabra with 
spikes all over it for sticking smaller candles on. A 
pile of candles lay near. Some cost a halfpenny, and 
some cost a penny, and there was a money-box on a 
little table for you to put the money in to pay for 
them. (It's the same in all Catholic churches, 
because it is thought that candles are so much 
appreciated in heaven.) You light a candle and 
stick it on the candelabra with a special prayer to the 
Virgin Mary or one of the saints for something you 
really want. You light a halfpenny candle if it's 
an easy thing and a penny one if you feel you're 



78 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD 

going rather far. It's a little more expensive, but 
it's worth it. The Virgin Mary sometimes grants a 
request for nothing, but she's much more likely to do 
it if you light a candle. So are the saints. It's a 
special way to please them. 

In the middle of the altar was a kind of little 
square house called the Tabernacle in which the 
Sacred Host was kept. It was extremely holy. 
Everybody who passed it had to bend the knee in 
adoration, and the sacristan kept it nicely dusted 
with a feather brush. 

On the right hand of the chapel near the sacristy 
door was a big, upright box like an open wardrobe, 
with an arch on the top and curtains across the 
front and a little place behind curtains to kneel on 
at either side. That was the confessional. Catholics 
go to confession and get their sins forgiven about 
once a week, generally on Saturday night, so that 
they won't have time to commit any more sins 
(especially if they go to bed at once) before seven 
o'clock on Sunday morning when they go to com- 
munion. The safest time to sin is on Friday and on 
Saturday morning and afternoon and early on 
Saturday evening, so that there is not so much 
chance of dying and going to hell between the 
sinning and going to confession. 

The priest sits in the middle of the confessional 



THE CONVENT 79 

behind the curtains and forgives sins quite easily, 
and when he has forgiven them God does. But if 
you die in mortal sin before the priest forgives you, 
you go to hell and burn for all eternity, and when 
you're once there no power on earth can ever get you 
out again. Hell is a great burning pit full of flames 
and red-hot cinders where the devils live. They 
are used to the heat and go about their business just 
as usual, but Catholics who die in mortal sin and go 
there never get to like it. That's their punishment. 
Mortal sin is a sin that's really dreadful, such as 
coming late to mass on Sunday, eating meat on 
Friday, or murdering your father and mother. 
There's another kind of sin that's not so bad, called 
venial sin, such as cheating or fighting or being 
unkind to one another. If you die in that sort of 
sin you go to purgatory. 

Purgatory is not so frightful as hell because it's 
not kept so hot, and if you are patient there and don't 
complain your sins are forgiven after some time, and 
you go to heaven just as usual. But, of course, it's 
pleasanter and shorter to go to confession just before 
you die, so that you don't have time to go wrong 
again. 

There's another way of keeping out of purgatory 
in advance, but you must be able to count well to do 
it. It's by saying special sort of prayers called 



80 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD 

" indulgenced prayers." Every time you say them 
some of the purgatory that you've been letting your- 
self in for is knocked off. Some knock off forty days, 
some sixty and some more, so that if you can say 
them quickly enough you can get rid of a year in no 
time. But, of course, you must keep count as you 
go along or it's pure waste of prayers, and it's very 
difficult to count properly unless you're used to it. 
The best thing is to have a pencil and a piece of 
paper in front of you while you pray and jot it down, 
though some people are very clever at counting on 
their fingers. There are some quite special prayers 
that knock off all purgatory at one blow. They are 
much longer than the others, but I always thought 
they saved time in the end, and they are much safer. 
There's another place called " Limbo," kept at 
quite a mild temperature, where the souls of the 
people who died before Our Lord came to save the 
world are detained. They long to go to heaven but 
they can't, however good they've been, because they 
lived before the forgiveness of sins was established. 
If they went straight to heaven there would be no 
knowing whose sins had been forgiven and whose 
had not, and it would cause great confusion, so they 
have to wait till the last day, when every one will get 
what they deserve. It's very sad, but it can't be 
helped. 



THE CONVENT 8 1 

Hell, purgatory and limbo, seem to be like three 
separate compartments — hot, hotter and hottest — 
with the lids on, and they all want looking after. It 
sounds puzzling until youVe learnt about it in the 
catechism, but it is really quite simple, and with the 
grace of God all will come right in the end. On the 
last day, when the deafening trumpet has been 
sounded, purgatory and limbo will both be emptied 
and the people in them will be admitted into heaven ; 
but hell will go on for ever and ever to satisfy the 
wrath of God. 

When I first went to the convent I hadn't been 
baptised at all, not even in an improper way, and 
every one was sorry for me, as if I had measles or 
some bad illness. 

The nuns used to say, " Don't you know that you 
are not the child of God ? " or, " Don't you think it 
would be dreadful if you died in the night and 
suddenly found yourself in a pit of awful fire ? " 

I said, yes, I did think it would be dreadful. And 
so I did. But at the same time I didn't want to be 
baptised because no one had ever before told me 
that it would be so good for me. I was so obstinate 
that one of the nuns who was very kind-hearted used 
nearly to begin to cry whenever she looked at me, 
and she couldn't sleep at night for praying that I 
might be converted. I thought it very kind of her, 



82 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD 

because she was no relation. The girls used to tell 
me too that I should go to hell, but I didn't care at 
all for what they said. They were not severely 
dressed in black and white with long rosaries round 
their waists as the nuns were. The thing was that 
I didn't really believe in hell. I thought if it was 
true it would have been in all the papers and I 
should have heard about it somehow. But I some- 
times used to feel uncomfortable and think it might 
be better to be on the safe side. 

The person who talked to me about it most of all 
was Reverend Mother, and I was more frightened 
of her than of anybody else. She always seemed so 
much grander and more important than any of the 
other nuns. The black part of her dress seemed 
blacker, and the white part whiter, and her rosary 
heavier and longer than theirs, but that was only 
because she was the Reverend Mother. She was 
very big and broad, and her skirts waved to and fro so 
that they almost touched the walls on each side of 
the corridor as she walked along. Her face was 
light brown and quite square, like a piece of card- 
board, and her eyes were round and dark and bright. 
The mouth was so long that the ends of it seemed to 
get lost in each side of her coif, and her teeth were 
big and yellow. Everybody was afraid of her, 
because she was so holy and had such a deep loud 



THE CONVENT 83 

voice. When she came into the class-rooms to 
listen to the lessons the girls trembled. Sometimes 
she used to interrupt and ask a question herself, 
but it was nearly always one of three questions : first, 
the sons and character of William the Conqueror ; 
second, a list of the seven capital sins or vices and 
their contrary virtues ; and third, the French for 
Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. When she prayed 
she looked so severe I thought the saints must feel 
alarmed. 

One day she sent for me into her private room 
where she received visitors and scared naughty girls 
and invented punishments. She was sitting in her 
great armchair waiting for me. I stood in front of 
her, but I was afraid to look at her face, so I looked 
at her hands. They were lying in her lap with 
black mittens on. They looked immensely strong 
and heavy. 

She said she had sent for me because she had 
something to say to me — did I understand ? And I 
said, " Yes, Reverend Mother." 

And then she asked whether I had made up my 
mind to become one of God's children by being 
received by baptism into the Catholic church. 

I was dreadfully frightened, but I hadn't made up 
my mind, so I said, " No, Reverend Mother." 

Then she said, did I know that God couldn't 



84 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD 

possibly love me until I had been baptised, and I 
said, " Yes, Reverend Mother." 

She said, did I want to remain for ever an outcast 
from the community of the blessed, and I was just 
going to say, " Yes, Reverend Mother," but I thought 
perhaps that wasn't the right answer, and I said, 
" No, Reverend Mother," and that was right. 

Then she told me she had had a vision. She said 
she had seen the souls of two little children before 
the judgment seat of God. One soul was white as 
snow, but the other had a large ugly stain on it as 
black as ink. That was because it had never been 
cleansed by baptism. The little white soul was let 
into heaven, and God and all the saints and angels 
rejoiced, but the little black soul was cast forth into 
hell, and God and all the saints and angels were full 
of sorrow. 

That was the end of the story. I thought it was 
a foolish story. The child with the black soul 
couldn't help that it had not been baptised, and God 
could surely just for once have let the little soul into 
heaven if He was really grieved about it. But I 
didn't dare to say so. I said nothing at all, but my 
face grew hot and I stared at the floor and twisted 
my fingers together and looked sulky and stupid. 
Then Reverend Mother said, would nothing ever 
touch my heart, and had I got nothing to say to 



THE CONVENT 85 

her ? I daren't go on being silent as if I wasn't 
interested, but my head went round and I could 
think of nothing to say. Then I remembered some- 
thing just in time. I asked was there a kitchen 
stove in hell ? 

Reverend Mother looked surprised and shocked. 
She said no cooking would be done in hell, at least 
no cooking of food ; that the souls of the damned 
would hunger and thirst for ever. 

I said I didn't mean that ; but there had been 
a big kitchen stove in the kitchen of my grand- 
father's house, and I had once tripped up and fallen 
with my hands straight on it when it was nearly 
red-hot. 

That was true, and I had never forgotten how 
terribly it had burnt my hands and what awful 
blisters I had had. When I told Reverend Mother 
about it I remembered how kind my grandfather 
had been when I showed him my hands, and how he 
had loved me. I was afraid I was going to cry, but 
I didn't want her to see. I was so sinful that I 
nearly hated her. 

She said she didn't know about a kitchen stove in 
hell, but that each of the damned would certainly 
find there the thing that he most feared and hated. 
That was part of the plan. 

Then she told me to go and think over all that she 



86 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD 

had said. She hoped that if nothing else could 
influence me the fear of hell might lead me to the 
love of God. My eyes were so full of tears that I 
could hardly see my way to the door, but I got out 
of the room without her noticing it. When I was 
outside in the corridor I put my arm up against the 
wall and hid my face and cried, because I wanted so 
much to see my grandfather. I knew he would have 
comforted me and said that all she had told me was 
not true. Then I heard some soft footsteps and a 
rustling sound near me, and when I looked up I saw 
some nuns coming in procession from the refectory. 
They looked wonderfully clean and saintly, and they 
moved so quietly and smoothly that you could hardly 
hear them. 

When they saw me crying they stopped and came 
round me and tried to comfort me. They said, what 
a silly little girl to cry when so many of God's greatest 
blessings were within her reach. There were so 
many little girls who had not the great chances I had 
of being called to grace. One of the nuns, the one 
I loved best of all, called Sister L., held my hand 
and took me to a window seat and sat down and 
asked me what was the matter. I said I had been 
with Reverend Mother and she put her arm round 
me and drew me up against her, although the nuns 
were forbidden ever to kiss or embrace the children, 



THE CONVENT 87 

and she said, " God loves all little children. He has 
made them Himself so helpless and innocent.' ' 

Her dress and veil felt soft and holy. When they 
touched me it was like being caressed by something 
pure and tender. I was so wicked that I felt ashamed 
to stand so near her. I was afraid that if everything 
religious people said was true she might be sent to 
hell for saying that God loved all children, even if 
they weren't Catholics. 

I said, " I'm not frightened, but I hate her." 

And she said, " Oh, hush ! " and got up and 
glided away down the corridor so silently that I 
couldn't hear her move at all. She didn't once look 
back, and I knew it was because she was so shocked 
that I could be wicked enough to hate Reverend 
Mother ; and I began to cry again. 

I continued to be wicked. I didn't love God and 
I didn't believe in hell. I was quite sure that if my 
grandfather had been told about children being 
burnt in hell he would have said that it was nonsense 
and that I needn't believe it. 

But one day I tumbled into a puddle in the play- 
ground and was sent down to dry my clothes in front 
of the kitchen fire. I had never been in the kitchen 
before. It was a big kitchen with a stove in it larger 
than any stove I had ever seen. There were great 
iron bars across the front of it and the fire was 



88 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD 

blazing and roaring behind them. The middle bar 
was quite red-hot and, as I stood there, the heat 
scorched my face and hands. I thought how 
terribly it would hurt to have one's hands tied down 
on to that red-hot bar so that one could never get 
them off again. It made me feel quite faint to think 
about it, and then I remembered that if it were true 
about hell, hell might be just like that stove with fire 
blazing and roaring, and that all the people who 
weren't Catholics might go there and be tied on to 
red-hot bars. Suddenly I thought, what if it's true ? 
and I was frightened. I was so frightened that I 
determined to be a Catholic straight away. I nearly 
ran straight to Reverend Mother's room to tell her 
so, but I was afraid of that as well. So I stopped in 
front of the fire and kept saying to myself, " It isn't 
true." But in the night I woke up and remembered 
the stove and I was terrified again, and next morning 
I told the nuns that I wanted to be baptised and they 
were very glad. They seemed just as happy and 
excited as if somebody had given them a beautiful 
present. They smiled at me and congratulated me 
and held a service in the chapel to thank God for my 
conversion. Everybody looked bright and cheerful 
the whole day long, and all were kind and affectionate 
and said special prayers for me. We had an extra 
hour for recreation that evening, and Reverend 



THE CONVENT 89 

Mother came to us in the middle of it and brought 
me a nice new prayer-book and a pretty picture-card 
of the Holy Ghost descending upon the Apostles. 
She said she would thank God night and day for 
having listened to her prayers and touched my heart 
and converted me. But it wasn't really God who 
had converted me. It was the kitchen stove. 

II 

I AM BAPTISED 

Not long after I was converted I was received into 
the Catholic church. But I needed a great deal of 
instruction first, because my soul was so utterly dark. 
I began by learning the catechism. 

The catechism says that everybody is responsible 
for Adam's sin of greediness when he ate the apple 
which the Lord specially wanted kept. Adam 
didn't really care so very much for apples, but his 
wife tempted him to eat it. We all bear the stain of 
his guilt upon our souls, because he was the first man 
created, and it's his fault that there are so many 
people on the earth to sin against the Lord, because 
he would go on having so many children and grand- 
children. The Blessed Virgin is the only person 
who isn't blamed for Adam's sin, because she really 
had nothing to do with it. When I heard about it I 
was very glad I was going to be baptised and have 



90 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD 

my sins forgiven because, I thought, what with my 
own sins and what with Adam's things would be very 
difficult for me, and I needed all the grace I could 
possibly get. I was afraid at first that I shouldn't 
be able to believe about Adam, but then I thought 
that if I was going to be a Catholic I'd better get 
used to believing things. So I believed. 

I liked being baptised. I wore a pretty white 
muslin dress with a pale blue sash, and a wreath of 
flowers and a lace veil on my head, and white gloves 
and shoes and stockings. It suited me beautifully. 
I couldn't see myself because no looking-glasses were 
allowed in the convent, but when I came down 
dressed all the girls wanted to be the first to kiss me, 
because they said I looked so sweet. 

Everybody gave me presents. Some gave me 
prayer-books, and some gave me little statues of the 
saints, and some gave me picture-cards. One of the 
nuns gave me a rosary blessed by the Pope, and 
Reverend Mother gave me an Agnus Dei, a round 
piece of wax with the picture of a lamb stamped on it, 
sewn up in a bag with strings so that I could hang 
it round my neck. Catholics are delighted to get an 
Agnus Dei, because it's a most sacred thing, blessed 
by the Pope, and when you wear it the devil gets 
discouraged about you. 

The Pope is a very holy man. He blesses things 



THE CONVENT 9 1 

for nothing, and he is infallible. That means that 
he cannot err when he is teaching people what to 
believe and how to please God. He really knows 
what he is talking about. And if only people would 
not be so obstinate, but would believe everything he 
tells them without arguing, they wouldn't slaughter 
one another and quarrel about the proper way to be 
saved. I found that difficult to believe also when I 
first learnt it in the catechism, but then I tried hard 
and succeeded. 

I was baptised in the Catholic church at the end 
of the square not far from the convent. The girls 
and nuns walked behind me in procession, and 
Reverend Mother walked in front of me, first of all. 
She looked very proud and important and folded her 
hands in her sleeves, and her dress waved backwards 
and forwards across the pavement. 

When we got to the church a young priest called 
Father A. was waiting to baptise me. I knew him, 
because he used to come to the convent in the 
morning to say mass in the chapel. He was a good 
and holy priest, extremely tall and pale and as thin 
and quiet as a shadow. There were deep hollows 
under his cheek-bones, and his eyes were sunk so 
far back and hidden in such dark shadows that you 
could scarcely ever see them distinctly, even in broad 
daylight. His lips were always moving in prayer. 



92 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD 

He walked very fast, with long steps, and even in the 
street he prayed as he went along, and whenever he 
passed the church he stood still on the pavement and 
bowed his head and crossed himself, and paid no 
attention when rude little boys were surprised and 
laughed at him. He often stood in front of the 
crucifix at the bottom of the church praying with his 
head bent down, and if you went near enough you 
could see that his shoulders were shaking and tears 
were running down his cheeks. That was because 
he was so sorry for Christ that He had been scourged 
and crucified. 

He was thin because he gave nearly all his food to 
the poor and ate nothing but dry bread. He gave 
away his clothes as well and never wore an overcoat 
even in winter, and he slept on the floor because he 
had given away his bed. But he was most terribly 
severe to sinners, and many people daren't go to 
confess to him because he scared them so and gave 
them such dreadful penances. He scourged and 
tortured himself that he might never forget the pain 
our Lord had felt, and soon after I was baptised he 
went away to nurse the lepers, because he thought 
his life was still too easy and he wanted to see 
nothing but pain and misery till he died. He 
thought that was the right way to comfort Our Lord 
and help Him to forget what He had suffered. 



THE CONVENT 93 

When we got into the church he was standing near 
the font, waiting, in his cassock. It was as white as 
snow and he was praying to himself with his hands 
folded in his sleeves and his eyes quite hidden in 
shadows. Reverend Mother took off my veil and 
wreath, and I went and stood in front of him. I 
felt afraid as though I were standing near to God. 

He put his hands on my head and blessed me, and 
then stood quite still and silent, but I could see that 
his lips were moving. His hands were so thin and 
light that I could scarcely feel them on my head ; 
but they smelled beautiful. He must have washed 
them with scented soap to get them clean enough to 
touch the holy water with. 

He went on praying for a long time, but he made 
no sound, and the shadows round his eyes seemed 
to get blacker and blacker. The nuns and children 
fell on their knees round the font, and it was perfectly 
silent. For a moment I felt afraid, but I didn't 
move, and all of a sudden he bent down to me and 
said, quite low, " Oh, my little child, love Christ. 
He bled for you. He died for you. It is in the love 
of little ones like you that He finds comfort." 

His voice shook so that I thought he was crying, 
and so he was. When I looked up in his face I saw 
tears on his cheeks. 

Then he sprinkled holy water on my head and 



94 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD 

said the words of baptism that made God free to 
love me. 

I was glad to be baptised and get my sins forgiven, 
but I wished I knew whether my grandfather and all 
the people I had loved before had been baptised too. 
I thought how dreadful it would be if I went to 
heaven and found they were not there. But then I 
remembered that if I could approach God, Himself, 
one day in heaven when Reverend Mother was not 
near I could tell Him what good people they really 
were, and beg Him to let them in. If I could once 
get near to God I needn't be afraid of Reverend 
Mother. 

Ill 

MY FIRST CONFESSION 

I needed more special instruction before I made 
my first confession. Everybody does ; but I was 
given more than others, because I wasn't used to 
believing things and required so many explanations. 
The nuns said that was because I had been so 
shockingly brought up. 

It says in the catechism that the real way to repent 
of your sins when you go to confession is to be sorry 
for them only because they have offended God, and 
not because you have deserved hell by them. I was 
afraid that I shouldn't be able to be sorry in the 



THE CONVENT 95 

right way when the time came. I used to practise, 
but I found it very difficult. I didn't regret offending 
God half as much as going to hell. I didn't feel I 
knew God very well ; but if I had not had to think 
so much about escaping hell I might have been 
sorry for offending Him. I had not time enough 
for both. 

I made my first confession in a black dress and a 
black lace veil to a priest in the convent chapel. I 
was to have made it to a very kind priest, Father W., 
but he was taken ill with gout and couldn't come. 

Father W. was a dear old man, quite different from 
Father A., and he had the gout in his feet so badly 
that it took him quite a long time to hobble down 
the square from the church to the convent, but he 
only laughed and said it was a just punishment for 
his sins. He had a very handsome, saintly face. It 
looked as delicate and fragile as an egg-shell, but it 
had a quantity of tiny lines all over it, because he 
was very old. He had white hair falling nearly to 
his shoulders and golden-brown eyes which looked 
at you so kindly that you longed for him to bless you. 
Children came running from all sides for him to 
bless them when he walked down the square, even 
Protestant children. 

People said that he had visions. They said that 
once a ghostly nun came and sat at the foot of his 



96 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD 

bed and told him what it would be like in heaven. 
Sometimes he came into the playground when we 
were having recreation and then the smaller children 
would run to him and pull him down on to a seat 
and climb on his knee or lean against him and say, 
" What did the nun tell you about heaven, Father ? " 
And he would smile and shake his head and say, 
" Little mice mustn't be too fond of gobbling cheese. 
Little children mustn't be too fond of asking ques- 
tions." And his eyes would grow misty as though 
with tears, and he'd say, " The heart of man hath 
not conceived the joys God hath prepared for them 
that love Him." And he'd put his hands on our 
heads and look lovingly at us and say, " God has 
prepared a special place for each of His little ones, a 
special nest for each of His fledglings." 

He was very fond of us. He never told us about 
the horrors of hell, but always about the joy of 
heaven. When we asked him about hell he always 
said, " Never mind about that, my chickens. The 
devil is not so black as he's painted." And if we 
insisted he would say, " God loves us all. Every 
hair of our heads is precious to Him. Can we not 
trust ourselves into His keeping ? " 

When it was a fine evening and he wanted us to 
stay out longer at recreation he used to say to the 
nuns, " Let them enjoy themselves. I'll put it 



THE CONVENT 97 

right with the Blessed Virgin. She and I under- 
stand one another/' He talked about God and the 
saints as though he really knew them. People said 
he imposed very easy penances at confession, and 
forgave your sins almost before you had finished 
confessing them. 

One day, about four in the afternoon, Reverend 
Mother came into the refectory when we were having 
tea and said the priest had come to hear my con- 
fession. I felt dreadfully nervous. I put on my 
black veil and fetched my prayer-book. Reverend 
Mother took my hand, and we went into the chapel. 
There was no one there at all, but there was a dim 
light over everything and a smell of incense, and a 
still and holy feeling. 

Reverend Mother told me to go and kneel at the 
prie-Dieu near the confessional, and prepare myself 
for confession, and I went on tip-toe and knelt there. 
My knees were trembling so I feared I should 
topple over. I tried to pray, but my head was 
giddy and I didn't know what I was saying. Reverend 
Mother was kneeling in a seat two or three rows 
behind me, and that made it all the worse. Then I 
heard the chapel door open, and the priest walked 
up the chapel and squeezed himself into the con- 
fessional and pulled the curtain across the front of it. 
I knew he'd have to squeeze himself in because he 



98 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD 

was so fat. He had a heavy, greasy face and a large 
Roman nose that always seemed to jut up in the air, 
and his cheeks were so puffy that his eyes looked like 
little slits above them. He was new at the church 
and hadn't spoken to any of us yet. 

You take about a quarter of an hour to prepare 
yourself for confession. That gives you about five 
minutes to remember your sins and ten minutes 
to be sorry for them ; or you can do it the other 
way round if you like. I had examined my con- 
science the night before in bed, and had learnt my 
sins by heart, so I had an extra- five minutes for 
repenting. 

I kept repeating, " Oh, my God, I am sorry for 
my sins, and not because I fear the pains of hell," 
but I knew quite well it was not true. I really was 
not very sorry, and I did fear the pains of hell, very 
much indeed. My heart began to beat harder 
because I was so anxious. I knew that time was 
passing, and that if I did not repent quickly I should 
not make a good confession. I continued saying to 
God, " I am sorry," but every minute I grew more and 
more afraid knowing that I should soon be obliged 
to rise and go into the confessional. I thought that 
when I stood up I should certainly fall, because my 
legs felt so weak. At last I gave up trying to repent 
and felt nothing but fear. Then Reverend Mother 



THE CONVENT 99 

came up behind and touched me on the shoulder and 
I nearly screamed, because she had moved so quietly 
that I thought it was a ghost. 

She said, " It's time." 

And I got up and nearly tumbled through the 
curtain into the confessional. 

At first it seemed quite dark inside. There was a 
wire grating between me and the priest, and I could 
only just see a mass of something white behind it. 
At first I didn't know what it was and I was afraid 
to go near, but then it moved and I could see that 
it was the priest's cassock. 

I knelt down on the stool and stared through the 
grating. I felt that if I were to take my eyes away 
for one moment the white thing would jump out and 
seize me. I was shaking all over and the wooden 
stool seemed to cut into my knees, but I dug my 
finger-nails into the ledge in front of me and tried to 
keep still. 

The white thing moved again and the priest 
turned round to my side of the confessional. I 
could see a big pale lump where his face was, and I 
felt that his tiny eyes were staring in my direction. 
I dug my finger-nails still harder into the wooden 
ledge. If only he had said something it would have 
been better ; but he didn't. He was waiting for me 
to begin. 



100 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD 

I said the first part of the " confiteor " almost 
unconsciously. 

It's a long prayer you say at confession to remind 
God and the Virgin Mary and St. Michael the 
Archangel and John the Baptist and the Blessed 
Apostles Peter and Paul, and several of the other 
saints, that you are going to confess, so that they 
may get ready to listen. When you come to the 
middle you stop to get breath and name your sins. 

I was so nervous that I could only feel my lips 
moving and didn't know in the least what I was 
saying. But I had learnt it so carefully by heart, 
and practised it so often, that I got through it without 
any mistakes and struck my breast properly three 
times when I came to " through my fault, through 
my fault, through my most grievous fault." 

I was very pleased that I had managed it so well. 
I almost forgot to name my sins, because I was so 
pleased and surprised. But then I remembered and 
did. 

When I had counted them up on my fingers the 
night before they came to four ; but now, of course, 
I had to add about not loving God and not being 
sorry for my sins, and that made six. 

Some were bad ones, such as being unbelieving. 
That's one of the worst sins. I didn't believe about 
the devil's climbing over the fence into the Garden 



THE CONVENT 1 01 

of Eden, and disguising himself as a serpent and 
making all the trouble about the apple. I thought 
it more likely that Eve wanted the apple from the 
very beginning and invented the story about the 
serpent in order to put the blame on the devil. He 
had such a bad character already that anything 
would have been believed against him. I didn't 
believe either about the whale's being seasick and 
casting up Jonah on to dry land all tidily dressed as 
though nothing had happened as he appears in 
Bible pictures. I didn't believe that all the animals 
walked into the ark two and two, and behaved 
properly when Noah explained to them about the 
flood. I was sure some of them would have 
quarrelled. 

Those were really three sins, but I put them all 
together and called them heresy. Then there was 
frivolity , because I had laughed one morning during 
mass when the boy who was serving slipped down 
the altar steps and sat on the floor. Then there was 
gluttony, because I had sucked an acid-drop one 
morning during the catechism lesson. It made 
rather few sins, but I couldn't think of any more. I 
hadn't stolen anything or told lies or been rude to 
any one. I wished I had, because I was afraid that 
perhaps the priest might think it hadn't been worth 
while to come on purpose to forgive so few sins. It 



102 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD 

seemed like sending things to the wash when they're 
not properly dirty. But as the sins of heresy and 
impenitence were really bad I thought perhaps it 
would be all right. 

I confessed sins of heresy and frivolity and 
gluttony, and then I said that I didn't really love 
God and that I wasn't properly sorry for my sins, 
and the priest was dreadfully startled. I knew he 
was because I heard him wriggle all over and he 
said, quite sharply, " Eh ? " 

I told him again, and he said that impenitence was 
the most deadly of all sins, and that without penitence 
no absolution could be given. 

I felt very distressed because I had come on 
purpose to get absolution, and I didn't know what 
to say. And he said, " Doesn't the fear of ever- 
lasting hell lead you to repent your sins and vices ? ' : 

I said, yes, but I didn't think that was sufficient ; 
and he said, by heart, out of the catechism, " Sorrow 
for sins because by them we have lost heaven and 
deserved hell is sufficient when we go to confession. 
Don't you learn your catechism ? " 

I said, yes, but I had got it confused somehow. I 
was very relieved, and I thought how stupid I had 
been wasting so much time in trying to be sorry 
because I had offended God when I really need not 
have bothered. It made things so much easier. 



THE CONVENT 103 

He took no notice about my not loving God, and 
he said, " Have you no more sins to confess ? " I 
didn't wish to seem proud, so I said there might be, 
but I couldn't remember them at the moment. And 
then he said, " Had I been guilty of pride, covetous- 
ness, or lust ? " 

I wasn't quite sure what they meant, though I had 
had most sins properly explained. (I was very 
stupid at understanding about religious things.) I 
thought it might sound like boasting if I said, no, 
so I said, " Yes, Father." 

And he said, " Rage or slander ? " 

And I said, " Yes, Father." 

And he said, " Presumption, sloth, malice, or 
avarice, parsimony, the desires of the flesh ? " 

And I said, " Yes, Father." 

He said the sins just as though he were counting 
them up on his fingers, and not at all in an interested 
manner or as though he really cared whether I had 
committed them or not. 

I had no notion what the last two meant, but I 
thought that I might have been guilty of them 
without knowing it, and that I had better have them 
all forgiven while I had a chance. (One can't be too 
careful.) 

Then the priest gave me a lecture. It sounded as 
though it were said by heart, but it was not, really. 



104 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD 

He made it up as he went along. He explained why 
we had to avoid each of those sins and why they 
offended God. There were so many that it took 
him quite a long time, and I couldn't understand 
many of the words he used. I tried to at first, but 
he talked so quickly and indistinctly that at last I 
gave up trying and began to think of other things. 

I was delighted that the worst part of the con- 
fession was over. I felt inclined to jump for joy. 
The rest was quite easy. I only had to finish the 
last half of the " confiteor," and I knew I shouldn't 
make a mistake in that. 

When the priest had finished lecturing he said, 
" Say for your penance, my child, five Our Father's 
and five Hail Mary's, and may God's blessing be 
with you." 

I thought it was a very easy penance for all the 
sins he thought I'd been committing ; but I didn't 
say so. I just said, " Thank you, Father," and got 
up and came out of the confessional. 

Having your sins forgiven makes you feel clean 
and fresh, as you do after a bath. When I had 
finished saying my penance I happened to glance 
up at the picture of St. Mary Magdalene, and I loved 
her for looking at me so gently. The chapel was 
pretty and peaceful in the soft light, and it seemed 
to me as though the Virgin Mary and St. Joseph and 



THE CONVENT 105 

the Baby and all the other saints in the chapel were 
stretching their arms out to me, glad that I was 
happy. I felt I loved them too, I was ready to love 
everybody in the world, because I was so relieved 
that my first confession was over. And then I 
remembered that it was really God who had been so 
kind to me all the time, and that I was wicked and 
ungrateful not to love Him too. I began to love 
Him at once. I loved Him so much that I cried and 
hid my face on the top of the prie-Dieu. I was 
afraid lest I should make a noise, and I stuffed my 
handkerchief into my mouth and bit it to keep myself 
quiet. When I once loved God it was easy to be 
sorry for having offended Him, and I was. I thought 
I could never be wicked again, because He had been 
so merciful and because I need no longer dread my 
first confession drawing nearer and nearer. The 
more I loved Him the more I cried, till Reverend 
Mother came up and touched me on the shoulder 
and said, " Come, my child." 

I wiped my eyes and followed her out of the chapel, 
and when we were outside she stopped and patted 
my head and said, " Good little penitent ! I was 
praying all the time that you should be enabled to 
make a good confession. I can see that God has 
heard my prayer." 

But it wasn't her prayers. It was because I had 



106 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD 

been so wicked and God had forgiven me as soon as 
I asked and did not intend to punish me, and because 
my hateful first confession was over at last. 

I hardly spoke to any one all the rest of that day 
because I felt so grave. But I was very happy. 

IV 

CONVENT LIFE 

I stayed for two years in the convent, and the 
longer I stayed the happier I was. I loved the nuns 
because they were kind and gentle, and however 
naughty we were they forgave us as soon as we 
asked them to and forgot our naughtiness. I liked 
the girls too, and they were fond of me. We thought 
it wrong to feel angry or unforgiving to anybody. 
When we quarrelled we made peace again as soon as 
possible, and if we could not do it ourselves, the 
nuns would help us. They told us we must always 
forgive any one who offended us because we wished 
God to forgive U9. And we did. There were some 
Protestants among us, and we forgave them too, and 
tried not to think ourselves any better than they were. 

The convent was divided into two parts. One 
part was called the " Middle School." That was for 
girls who were not the daughters of ladies and 
gentlemen as we were, but only the daughters of men 



THE CONVENT 107 

and women. Their fathers were for the most part 
tradesmen or shopkeepers. They came and went at 
different doors. Their playground was at the side 
of ours, but there was a path with trees between us. 
We could see them and we knew them quite well by 
sight, but we were not supposed to, and if we met 
them in the street we never said, " How do you do ? " 
but looked the other way as though we hadn't seen 
them. That was because they were not so well born 
as we were and didn't pay so much for their education. 
But we knew that they went to heaven just the same. 

Soon after I was converted we had a new Reverend 
Mother. She was very old. Her face was yellow 
and wrinkled, but she was much kinder than the 
first one. She was always nodding her head and 
smiling, like the little china men and women who 
sit in the shop windows with their heads on balancing 
screws . When she was told of any of us being naughty 
she used to nod her head and smile and wrinkle up 
her eyes and say, " Oh, dear, dear ! but I'm sure 
she will do better now." 

And, of course, we said we would. 

Every week, on Saturday morning, we assembled 
in the big hall and Reverend Mother and three of 
the nuns sat at a table at one end of it and gave out 
conduct tickets. 

There were three kinds of conduct tickets. One 



108 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD 

was pale blue (the Blessed Virgin's colour) and 
marked " very good," another was red and marked 
" good," and a third was green and marked " in- 
different." The nuns said that once there had been 
some yellow ones marked " bad/' but they went out 
of print because they were never required. 

Reverend Mother called out the names and smiled 
and held out the tickets, and each girl went up and 
took her own, and made a bow and came back again 
with a red face. When any of us got an " indifferent " 
Reverend Mother said, " It's the very last time I'm 
going to give you this, now, isn't it ? " 

And we always said, " Yes, Reverend Mother." 

If we had said, " No, Reverend Mother," she 
would have been offended. 

We had beautiful grounds at the back of the 
convent for recreation. There were a long shady 
garden and a tennis lawn and a big asphalt play- 
ground. We played cricket and tennis and rounders 
and " prisoners," and we were never allowed to sit 
down for one minute or to talk together in twos or 
threes. That was because, firstly, it was bad for our 
health, and secondly, because secret societies which 
are abominably wicked and plot against Church and 
State are always begun by people sitting and whisper- 
ing together in twos and threes. So it's a really bad 
habit. 



THE CONVENT IO9 

When we were at meals or needlework a nun sat 
at the head of the table and read to us. The nun 
who read most frequently was an Irish nun called 
Mother K. She was very clever and quite young. 
Her front teeth were prominent and her face was 
covered with freckles, and sometimes a little wisp 
of bright red hair used to peep out from under her 
coif. She was tall and stooped a little, and her green 
eyes had a kind, mild expression. When they 
looked at you they seemed to grow bright and 
affectionate at once. There was nothing interesting 
that she could not tell you everything about. 

She read to us many very interesting books : 
adventures and novels (though she always left out 
the part in which the characters made love to one 
another. I knew because I'd read most of them 
before). She was supposed once a week to read to 
us from the lives of the saints, but we begged so hard 
to be let off that she very seldom did. It wasn't 
that we weren't interested in the saints, but the 
religious books sounded unreal after the others. We 
often coaxed her not to read at all but to let us ask 
her questions, and she would, and sat with her hands 
in her lap and her eyes shining and told us wonder- 
fully interesting things — about the sea or the stars, 
foreign countries or anything we wished. We liked 
it much better than the reading. 



110 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD 

Once a fortnight we each wrote an essay and stood 
up and read it aloud in class. The essays were 
generally successful. We wrote one on Shakespeare, 
and said that he was " England's brightest star" and 
another on Napoleon, and said that he was " a terrible 
example to the grasping and ambitious" and another 
on Cardinal Newman, and said that he was " beloved 
by God, and therefore brought to'light" and so he was. 
We also wrote one on the " Ideal Woman" and said 
that she must be good-tempered and truthful, and 
fond of fair play and babies, and clean in her person, 
so as to give a good example to her husband and 
children. And the nun in charge said, must she not 
be modest and pious and intelligent, so as to bring 
up her children as good Catholics in the fear of God ? 
We said we supposed so, but we had not thought to 
mention it. One girl said she must be obedient, 
and another shouted " Bosh ! " so loudly that she 
made us all jump and got a bad mark for impoliteness. 

After the essay on the " Ideal Woman " we wrote 
one on the " Ideal Man," and the nun was grieved 
and shocked because we nearly all paid more attention 
to his appearance and hair-dressing than to whether 
he was really to be trusted and had a nice character. 

I said mine must be dark and clean-shaved with a 
square chin and a fearless eye. Most liked ideal 
men to be clean-shaved, but some liked wavy auburn 



THE CONVENT III 

hair and a drooping moustache, and some liked 
pointed beards, and one preferred a shaved head like 
a German officer. They all hated whiskers, and 
everybody wanted hair and beards to be carefully 
attended to and not ragged. One said that no man 
could look really like an aristocrat unless he used a 
little brilliantine. One said that no man must smell 
of scented soap, but others liked scented soap. 

When the nun had listened to everything she said 
it was very wrong of us to give a thought to any- 
body's personal appearance. What was important 
was that a man should be honourable and fearless 
and ready to die at the stake for the true religion. 
If God had not vouchsafed him the greatest blessing 
He can vouchsafe to any man — to be a priest and do 
His work in that way — then at least he should console 
himself by devoting the whole of his strength and 
wisdom to the establishment of love and justice and 
the maintenance of God's Church on earth. 

Once a year we had a literary competition, when 
the girls from the four convents of the same order in 
London competed to write the best short story. 
The best story from each convent was sent to the 
central convent to be judged, and the story that was 
best of all was put into the library of the central 
convent. 

We signed the stories with artificial names, and 



112 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD 

Reverend Mother read them aloud to the bigger 
girls and the principal nuns. They each voted for 
the story they liked best, and the story that got the 
most votes was considered the best story. 

I was afraid my story would not be the best 
because most of the other girls lit candles to Our Lady 
or their favourite saints overnight and prayed for 
inspiration. But I did not ; and that was really 
being guilty of the sin of presumption. But it was 
not really because I thought the Blessed Virgin 
could not have helped me. I was so excited about 
writing the story that I forgot about the candle. 

As soon as Reverend Mother began to read the 
stories I felt sure mine would be the worst, because 
each one she read sounded more clever than the last. 
As she went on I was more and more sorry that I had 
not lit a candle. 

Some of the stories were about virgins who had 
pined away, gnawed with despair, and died of disease 
in lonely towers rather than renounce the Catholic 
faith ; and some about saintly hermits who had been 
roasted on hot cinders and scalped and suffocated 
and skinned alive, and yet persisted in proclaiming 
the true religion although the heathens and Pro- 
testants did all they could to stop them. 

There was a realistic one about a shipwreck which 
ran something like this : " The wind moaned, the 



THE CONVENT 113 

sea swelled, and the panting ship sank into the 
yawning gulf without a struggle, while women's 
hearts were wasting in the West." 

That was the one I feared most. I thought it so 
very pathetic. There was another one about a bird 
that sat on a branch outside its nest, singing, singing, 
singing to its little ones full of joy, till a false, cold- 
hearted cat, that had always pretended to be friendly, 
came and ate up the little ones while their mother 
fell dead of anguish. That was very well written, 
but not so striking as the one about the shipwreck. 

Then there was one about an urchin boy who died 
of hunger on a rich man's doorstep. But that was 
not convincing, because the rich man knew he was 
there all the time and could easily have fed him, 
but didn't. There were no proper explanations 
given. 

My story was signed " Nero." It wasn't long, 
but it was very full of incident. 

It was about an anarchist, who began life as a 
page-boy, but was lazy from the first. He would 
not stir a finger to help his mother keep his nine 
little brothers and sisters, but ate up all the scraps ; 
and the older he got the more anarchist he became. 
As he grew up he joined all sorts of pernicious 
secret societies and signed treacherous proclamations 
in his own blood. He tried to make the soldiers and 



114 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD 

policemen defy the Pope and massacre the king and 
court, and when they refused he reviled them. 

The reason of his wickedness was that he was 
really in the hands of the devil (I put that into the 
story to make it religious), and whenever he did 
anything particularly bad the devil appeared on his 
left-hand side and looked over his shoulder in scarlet 
and grinned and laughed, " ha-ha ! " (not an honest, 
manly laugh, but an artful, mocking snigger), and 
his guardian angel appeared on his right hand in 
white muslin and wept to see the shocking way in 
which he was going on. But he didn't know they 
were there, and nothing stopped him. 

He grew worse and worse. The story told many 
of the sinful things he did. One was that when the 
inhabitants of a burning house that had been set on 
fire by another anarchist put their heads out of the 
window and besought him to help them, he defied 
them and refused. He flung up his cloak over his 
left shoulder and tossed his head and said, "Burn, 
pernicious brood, a fitting holocaust to victorious 
anarchy ! " and they did. (They were all aristocrats 
of the best sort.) 

It took me some time to get the sentence about the 
holocaust into shape. Spelling didn't count in that 
competition or I should have put another one. 

This anarchist went from bad to worse, but 



THE CONVENT 115 

nothing he ever did succeeded. And when the 
other anarchists saw that he was unable to make the 
soldiers and policemen revolt and misbehave they 
scorned him and refused to be his friends. So he 
went on getting poorer and poorer and more and 
more lonely and sorrowful, and at last, when he had 
no more money and was thoroughly tired of being 
wicked, he met a Catholic priest who had also been 
an anarchist in his young days, but had been con- 
verted. Then the other anarchist was converted 
and became a priest too, and they died in one another's 
arms. 

Some of the girls cried at the description of how 
they died, and one of the nuns wiped her eyes. I 
didn't like the story much, but I thought the nuns 
might because of the conversion of the anarchists. 
And they did. 

When the votes had been counted up, Reverend 
Mother smiled and said, " I congratulate ' Nero ' 
on having written the best story, and I fully endorse 
the verdict of * Nero's ' companions." 

Then everybody except myself began to clap, and 
my face grew red and they guessed who " Nero " 
was. They gathered round and began to con- 
gratulate me. It was not good for me, because it 
put me in danger of the sins of pride and arrogance, 
but I offered up three morning masses a week for 



Il6 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD 

the gift of humility, and after a long time it helped 
and I forgot about the competition. 

It was a good thing, because there were many 
other things for which I wished to offer morning 
mass. I needed so many gifts to keep my soul in 
good condition. One must be so careful. 

I never missed the early mass, though I was often 
rather sleepy. The candles were alight on the 
altar ; the boy who served was clean — he had not 
had time to get soiled — and except for yawning he 
behaved beautifully. When he rang the little bells 
at the offertory they sounded like silver chimes. 

I liked best when Father W. said mass. Father A. 
made one feel uneasy. He prayed so fervently and 
bowed so low, and looked so grave and ghostly, that 
he seemed not to belong to the world at all. He 
glided noiselessly about, and his face was white and 
intent, as though he were seeing God and listening 
to Him. There were so many shadows on it that 
when he turned, facing us, he was like a picture of 
Death, in long robes and with a frightful grinning 
skull for a head. When he spread out his hands 
they looked as bony and brittle as chickens' claws. 

When it was Father G.'s turn (the priest I had 
made my first confession to), he waddled about with 
his small eyes turned up to heaven and his fat cheeks 
shaking like jellies. He was protrudant in front 



THE CONVENT 117 

and gabbled off the mass as quickly as though he had 
not a moment to waste and was anxious to get home 
to breakfast. 

But Father W. looked beautiful and saintly in his 
golden robes. He wore his spectacles right on the 
end of his nose, and he was so stiff that it was difficult 
for him to get up and down the altar steps. When 
the boy held up the gospel for him to read he 
clasped his hands and looked down his nose through 
his spectacles and spoke rather indistinctly because 
he had lost some of his teeth. But it was in Latin 
and we should not have understood in any case, so 
it did not matter. The candle-light shone in his 
white hair and made a golden mist round his head, 
and when he turned round and stretched out his 
arms to us to say the " Pax Vobiscum," he looked 
full of love and very old and humble. 

I liked evening benediction too, when the organ 
played and the choir sang. Then I loved God most 
of all. The altar was brilliant with flowers and 
candles, and the golden spikes round the monstrance 
shone like sun rays. People from outside came to 
benediction, so that the chapel was often full, and 
there was a very solemn, thrilling feeling in it. At 
times I used to cry when the litany was sung, and 
other girls did also. It was because the music was 
so grave and gentle and the lights so bright and the 



Il8 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD 

shadows so quiet. The soprano solo was sung by 
Mother R., a German nun with a peculiarly long 
nose, round bright eyes, and a stiff way of holding 
her head. She was so agitated when she sang 
that her cheeks and part of her nose grew red and 
her eyes filled with tears. She had a sweet, sharp 
voice like a bird's, and it seemed to dart about the 
chapel, in and out the shadows and up into the roof. 
The contralto solo was sung by a girl called M. H., a 
Protestant. She had a deep rich voice, like black 
rolls of velvet, and many people cried during the 
litany when she came to, " Lamb of God, which 
takest away the sins of the world." 

That is the most solemn part of the litany. The 
chapel is always very still while it is being sung. 
People hold their breath and bow their heads. M.'s 
voice trembled when she sang it, as though she were 
afraid of something. 

When her father heard that she sang in the chapel 
he was angry because she was a Protestant. He 
forbade her to sing any more and she cried herself 
into a fever. Her father came to take her away, and 
said that he would have her voice trained that she 
might sing at concerts, but she did not wish to. It 
was the " Lamb of God " in the litany that she 
liked singing, with the lights and flowers on the altar 
and the people kneeling, listening to her. Then her 



THE CONVENT 119 

father gave way and allowed her to sing again, and 
next day when she came out of the chapel she fell on 
her knees at Reverend Mother's feet in the corridor 
outside, and said, " I want to be a Catholic ! I want 
to be a nun ! " 

And Reverend Mother said, " You cannot go 
against your father's wishes." 

M. fell into hysterics and the doctor was sent for. 
The same night her father came and took her home. 
But she ran away from home back to the convent and 
declared she would kill herself if she was taken away 
again. So she was allowed to stay and she sang in 
the chapel more and more beautifully. Whenever 
she had sung she used to cry because she was for- 
bidden to be a Catholic. 

There was another girl in the convent who wished 
to be a nun but was not able to. She thought the 
world outside so wicked that she could be safe only 
in a convent. She was afraid even of going for a 
walk. She was very small and weak with a tiny 
pointed face like that of a mouse and little round 
green eyes. She was old enough to be a nun, but 
she could not pass the examinations, and she was too 
delicate to stand the hard life and the fasting. But 
she always wore a black dress and shaved her head 
so as to look as much like a nun as possible. She 
did everything she could to grow cleverer and 



120 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD 

stronger. She passed hours together kneeling by 
the altar rails in the chapel praying for brains and 
strength, and often fainted before she could be made 
to come away. She would jump up every now and 
then to light a fresh candle. She spent all her spare 
money on candles, but it did not seem to be of any 
use. She remained just as unintelligent and weak. 
She constantly went to the doctor to see if there was 
any hope, and came back with her eyes red from 
crying because he said she was not stronger. Every 
time she heard she had failed in an examination she 
would lie ill in bed for a whole day crying. The 
nuns used to tell her that it was evidently not God's 
will that she should be a nun, and that she must try 
to serve Him in some other way ; but nothing could 
comfort her. She talked of nothing but becoming 
a nun, and asked us a hundred times a day whether 
we thought she would ever be one. If we said yes, 
she would throw her arms round us and kiss us, and 
if we said no, she would cry. At last she grew 
weaker and weaker and died, partly, it was said, of 
fretting. 

Nuns lead hard lives and have tiny bedrooms with 
no furniture but a crucifix, a little mat near the bed 
and a chair and washstand. They are not allowed 
to let their hair grow long or to look in the glass, and 
they get up very early in the morning in the dark to 



THE CONVENT 121 

pray while other people are still warm in bed. 
Prayers must be said, and if ordinary people are too 
lazy to get up and do it religious people have to bear 
the consequences. 

Nuns fast very often and take nothing but bread 
and water, and they refuse especially dainty food in 
case they should fall into the sin of greed. Whatever 
they least like to do they must do as often as possible 
in order to mortify the flesh ; because the catechism 
teaches us that human nature is so bad that whatever 
we feel inclined to do is nearly certain to be wrong, 
and in the end will lead us to hell. 

Nuns are not allowed to grow very much attached 
to people because God does not like it and is afraid 
they might get to love somebody better than Him. 
If a nun shows much affection for the girls or is a 
favourite with them she usually disappears and is 
sent away to another convent. 

Nuns are not allowed to fall into a temper, raise 
their voices in anger, or slap one another as ordinary 
people do, and so their calling is not popular. The 
girls in the convent did not like to sit on a chair 
where a nun had been sitting or kneel in a place in 
the chapel where a nun had been kneeling for fear 
of " catching a vocation" as though it were measles. 
Most nuns are contented with their lives. Some 
make rope ladders out of sheets and let themselves 



122 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD 

down through the window and run away ; but most 
of them don't. Mother W., who taught us catechism, 
was a merry nun. One day when the lesson was 
upon " Holy Orders," she said that people imagined 
that nuns were women who had had some dis- 
appointment in love and went into the convent to 
cure their sorrow, which was nonsense. She had 
become a nun because she liked the life and thought 
it was the proper way of serving God. She said that 
nuns were for the greater part like her. 

I had no wish to become a nun. I was not good 
enough, and the older I got the worse I became. I 
fought against all sorts of sins and vices, but it was 
no good. My soul grew blacker and blacker ; I 
could feel it doing it. I was more and more filled 
with irreverent curiosity, and I found it more and 
more difficult to believe without asking questions. 
If you cannot believe without asking questions it 
means you lack faith, and if you lack faith you cannot 
be a proper child of God. But I could not help 
asking questions. When I did so during " religious 
instruction," the nuns told me not to interrupt but 
to ask questions privately, and when I did that they 
usually said that God does not really mean us to 
understand much down here, but that everything 
would be properly explained after the last day. I 
was so impatient that I felt I could not wait until the 



THE CONVENT 1 23 

last day, which was being guilty of the sin of audacity. 
Even when I gave up asking questions I secretly 
wondered, and that is nearly as bad, and comes from 
want of reverence. 

A very pious and learned priest called Monsignor 
C. R. used to come to the convent about once a 
month to give us special religious instruction, and 
then we put our gloves on to show respect and sat in 
rows in the big hall to listen to him. 

He was so fat that he bulged out of his armchair 
on all sides. Wherever there was an opening in the 
chair a piece of him protruded. His nose was so 
long and heavy that it hung down over his upper lip, 
and his upper lip was so long and heavy that it hung 
down over his lower lip. His cheeks were fat and 
hung down too, and so did his double chin. 

He used to sit in the chair with his legs apart and 
pant, and try to fold his hands together over his 
stomach, but it was so big that he could hardly do 
so. He gasped and wheezed between each sentence, 
so that it took him a long time to say the simplest 
thing, and we dared not move or cease looking 
interested. 

He used to question us about what we should 
answer if heretics made mocking or unfriendly 
inquiries about our religion. Every time he asked 
a question he raised his eyebrows as high as they 



124 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD 

could go, opening his smeary little eyes ; and as soon 
as somebody began to answer he dropped them 
again with a sort of snap, and frowned and thrust his 
lips out as much as to say, " I know you're going to 
make a mistake/ ' 

I used to stare at his big nose' and thick lips and 
fishy eyes, and wonder what they would look like if 
I made a blasphemous reply to one of his questions. 
I longed so much to do so that I was afraid I might 
one day forget myself. 

Once he asked us, " What would you answer if a 
Protestant were to say toyou : ' Why do you reverence 
the personal relics of the saints ? ' " 

A blasphemous reply came into my head in a 
moment. It was : " Because hair and teeth will 
always fetch their price.' ' 

My grandfather's cook had once said that when 
talking of her own false set. I begged God's for- 
giveness at once. But blasphemous answers to all 
such questions instantly occurred to me. I could 
not prevent it, so that I was obliged to keep begging 
forgiveness at the time. 

Argumentativeness was another of my more serious 
sins. Once at evening recreation when it was wet 
and we stayed indoors and had general conversation 
with Mother W. I began an argument about 
anarchists. I insisted that they were not really so 



THE CONVENT 1 25 

bad as people thought them. I said that once I had 
lived with anarchists and that they were very talented 
people who wrote plays and talked French better than 
many people who were not anarchists. 

Mother W. was shocked and said I did not know 
what I was saying. She reminded me that I had 
pointed out in my own story how terribly wicked it 
was to be an anarchist, and I answered that my 
anarchist was only so wicked because he was in the 
hands of the devil who had been invented by religious 
people. 

Mother W. was still more shocked and her face 
grew red, but the other girls were interested. And 
when I saw that I became still more audacious. 
Mother W. said that anarchists wished to destroy the 
Church, and threw bombs at rich people in order to 
steal their money. I replied that anarchists wrote 
splendid leading articles and made important speeches 
and were extremely particular whom they made 
friends with. She said that she had never heard 
such things said as I was then saying, and I said that 
if she went to Hyde Park on a Sunday she would 
hear many clever and noble people saying much 
worse, and that I had often been there and asked 
them for their autographs. 

Then Mother W. was so angry that she could not 
sit down any longer. She stood up and said that 



126 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD 

anarchy was a dreadful evil, condemned by the 
Church, and that to encourage it and believe in it 
was to be in a state of mortal sin* I was angry too, 
and blasphemous. I said that being an anarchist 
was much healthier and more interesting than being 
religious, and that as soon as I had finished my 
education I should at once become an anarchist 
again. 

The girls were still more interested. They stared 
and listened in perfect silence. 

Mother W. by then could hardly speak. She 
walked to the door and opened it, and motioned to 
me to go out. When I reached the door she told 
me to go to my room and think how wrong I had 
been. She said she would speak to Reverend 
Mother. The girls had begun whispering together. 

I went out and up to my room. I opened the 
window and leant my elbows on the sill, although it 
was raining, and looked out into the quadrangle. 
There was nobody there, but the plants were all 
bright green and dripping with rain. 

I tried to make an " act of contrition," but my 
heart was hard and I was unable to do so. I gave 
myself to wicked rebellious feelings. I was angry 
because Mother W. insisted that all anarchists were 
wicked when I knew they were not. I remembered 
how happy I had been when I was an anarchist, and 



THE CONVENT 1 27 

how interesting it was making propaganda in the 
Park and instructing policemen. I thought about 
my grandfather and wished I could see him. I 
knew he would have listened to everything and have 
tried to explain, instead of being so positive and 
obstinate as Mother W. 

I felt utterly desolate and began to cry ; but 
just then a lay sister came in with my supper on 
a tray, so I pretended to be making signs to some 
one in the quadrangle, and laughed, so that she 
should not know I had been crying and tell the 
other nuns. 

It was the lay sister who came to brush my hair in 
the morning. I loved her because she was so pretty 
and gentle. She had a soft, bright face like a flower, 
and blue eyes and little pearly teeth. When she 
brushed my hair her hands were so light and tender 
that I hardly felt them, and she never tugged at the 
tangles. 

She did not smile now as she generally did, but 
looked serious and put my supper on the table and 
told me Reverend Mother had said that I was not to 
come down again that night. I pretended not to 
care ; but I did. I felt I could not bear to be lonely 
like that all the evening. I longed to take hold of 
her rosary and tell her I knew that I was wicked and 
that Fd try to be better, and ask her not to look so 



128 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD 

grave as if she did not like me. But I was too proud, 
and she went out of the room without speaking, and 
I began to cry again. 

I didn't eat my supper (I was exceedingly 
hungry, but I was too proud), and I went to bed 
feeling very miserable. It was the first time in my 
life that I had gone to bed knowing that some one 
was angry with me. 



V 

I did not go to mass next morning. The lay 
sister brought my breakfast into my room and told 
me to wait there. At first I thought I should be left 
alone again all day, but when mass was finished 
Reverend Mother sent for me. 

She was waiting for me in the corridor outside the 
chapel with her eyes screwed up and her hands 
folded in her sleeves. When she saw me she smiled 
and nodded her head as usual and said to me, " We 
are going for a little walk in the garden." 

And we did. We walked side by side down the 
gravel path between the trees. Reverend Mother's 
head kept on nodding a little as she walked and her 
hands were still folded in her sleeves. I knew that 
the girls at morning preparation in the big school- 
room could see us walking together, and it made me 



THE CONVENT 1 29 

feel important. It was only when a girl had done 
something very bad that Reverend Mother took her 
walking in the garden. 

She said that Mother Woodward had told her the 
night before how strangely I had talked at evening 
recreation. She could hardly believe that one of her 
girls could have talked like that. If I had been a 
wild girl or a heathen who had never known the 
blessing of having been admitted to the true religion 
she would have understood it, but as it was there 
was no excuse. She said, " I am sure you did not 
understand the seriousness of what you said." 

I said, no, I didn't think it was so serious, and that 
lots of people said the same as I had said. 

Reverend Mother said, not pious Catholics, and 
that when people talked like that it was only because 
they had not had the advantages of education and 
religious instruction and so had never had a chance 
to learn the truth. She said that very often 
irreligious words lightly spoken were the cause of 
great spiritual trials and temptations, and that, by 
speaking carelessly as I had done, I might have been 
exposing my companions to spiritual danger. Then 
she said, " I am sure you will be more careful in the 
future, will you not ? " 

And I said, " Yes, Reverend Mother." 

Then she smiled and stopped, and turned to look 



130 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD 

at me and said, " It's getting time for you to make 
your first communion." 

Her face looked very kind and glad when she said 
that, as if she thought it ought to make me happy. 
I looked down on the ground and said, " Yes, 
Reverend Mother." 

And when I looked up she was still standing 
looking at me, and smiling and nodding her head. 
Then she patted me on the shoulder and told me to 
run into the house and make my peace with Mother 
W., and I said, " Thank you, Reverend Mother " 
(we had to), and walked up the path. I could see 
the girls in the big classroom bobbing up and down 
in their seats to watch me, and when I came near 
enough some of them waved their hands to me. 
But I took no notice. I went to look for Mother W. 

She was watering the plants in the quadrangle. 
She had her back to me and didn't see me, and I 
went up and stood beside her and said, " Please 
forgive me, Mother, for arguing about anarchists, and 
please do not be angry with me." 

She was very kind. She forgave me at once (nuns 
always do) and said, " Well, my child, then let us 
forget all about it." 

Then she told me to remember that the nuns were 
fond of me and thought I did my lessons well, and 
looked to me to give a good example to the smaller 



THE CONVENT 131 

girls now that I was growing big, and that it would 
always pain them if they thought they could not 
trust me. She said it showed want of respect to 
God and to the nuns to joke about things that were 
really very serious. 

But I had not been joking. 

When I went into the big classroom the girls 
turned round and stared at me as if I was something 
very interesting, and when the bell rang for classes 
they came round to me to ask where I had been the 
night before, and what Reverend Mother had been 
saying to me. But I did not answer. When the 
day girls came the others told them what had 
happened during evening recreation, and for a long 
time afterwards they used to ask me about my life 
among anarchists, and what they were like. But I 
did not tell them, because I did not want to grieve 
the nuns when they had been so kind to me. 

VI 

Three of us made our first communion together 
during mass in the chapel one morning about two 
months after I had spoken about anarchists and been 
forgiven. 

We had special instruction from a priest for about 
a month beforehand in order to make us really fit 
for the blessing we were about to receive. In the 



132 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD 

intervals between the instruction we were allowed 
special time in the chapel for meditation. 

The priest said that when our Lord at the Last 
Supper pronounced the words, " This is My body. 
This is My blood," over some bread and wine, He 
really meant it, and that ever since then Catholic 
priests had been able to change bread and wine into 
the body and blood of Christ by the power of God 
when they said the same words at mass. What we 
swallow when we go to communion is not really 
flour made up into a wafer (as we should think it was 
if we had not been told), but it is the true flesh of 
Christ, and as it is so merciful and gracious of Christ 
to come down on to the altar and turn into bread and 
wine for our benefit, we must be in a special state 
of grace to receive Him. He told us other things 
besides, but that was what mattered most. 

I did not feel glad I was going to make my first 
communion. I was afraid I should not make a good 
one, and that when the priest put the sacred host on 
the tip of my tongue I should not be able to believe 
it was our Lord Himself. It did not seem natural. 
And if the sacred host really was our Lord Himself, 
it did not seem the proper thing to do with it. I did 
not believe I ought to swallow it, but the priest said 
I ought. Swallowing a person is not the proper way 
to show respect even if you are in the highest state 



THE CONVENT I33 

of grace. But the priest said it was quite right and 
that no mistake had been made. 

Even then I did not feel confident about it ; but 
that was because I was lacking in faith and had not 
been brought up in the true religion from a baby as 
the others had. They did not seem to think there 
was anything peculiar about it. They thought, in 
fact, that it was wrong to make conjectures about 
anything one ought to believe ; that was because 
they had plenty of faith. I longed to argue about it, 
but I did not because it would have grieved the nuns 
and put my companions into spiritual danger. 

I used to stare at the sacred host during mass and 
benediction, and wonder if it could be the living 
body of our Lord, and if it was, how the priest dared 
to fix it into the monstrance and take it out again as 
he did in benediction, and carry it about and lift it 
over his head and put it back into the chalice when 
he had done with it, and shut it up in the tabernacle 
after mass and go away to breakfast as if nothing had 
happened. It seemed to me that if the priest really 
believed the host was our Lord alive upon the altar 
he would be almost afraid to touch it, and ready to 
die with joy at being allowed to approach anything 
so sweet and sacred, instead of trotting about with it 
and gabbling over it hastily as Father G. did when 
he said mass. I used to w^tch Father G. and 



134 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD 

wonder if he really cared in the least for what he 
was doing. 

Once when I had stayed on in the chapel after 
mass for meditation I heard some one snoring in the 
sacristy. The door was open, and it could be heard 
quite plainly all over the chapel. It was the priest 
who had just been saying mass. He had come from 
a long distance to do it and had had to get up earlier 
than usual. He was very tired and had fallen 
asleep. 

It made me cry to think that he could be so cold 
and thoughtless as to lie there snoring with our 
Lord in the tabernacle listening to him. I thought 
Christ must be grieved to think that people could be 
near Him and forget Him. They should be kneeling 
and praying in the chapel day and night if they 
really believed that He is in the tabernacle waiting 
for them. The more I thought about it the more I 
cried, and when I came out of the chapel my eyes 
were red and the nuns asked me what was the matter. 
But I was obstinate and would not tell them. 

When the morning for our first communion came 
we were dressed in white muslin and white lace veils 
that fell to the bottom of our dresses. (I wore the 
same dress I was baptised in, but it had to be let 
down all round.) We each carried a clean handker- 
chief, a rosary and prayer-book in our hands to show 



THE CONVENT 1 35 

respect, and when all the nuns and children and 
visitors were in their places we walked in procession 
up the chapel and knelt down in three prie-Dieu at 
the top near the altar rails. I suppose we looked 
very impressive, because everybody was so quiet 
when we came in. 

I felt extremely nervous. Father W. was saying 
mass, and as the time drew near for us to rise and 
kneel at the altar to take communion I felt more and 
more so. 

At last the moment came. Reverend Mother 
appeared from somewhere and stood beside us and 
gave us the signal to rise and we did so. I followed 
the other two to the foot of the altar, and we knelt 
there in a row and waited for the priest to bring the 
host to us. 

He turned round and began to move with the 
chalice towards us. I longed for him to stop. I felt 
I could not remain there and let him put the host 
upon my tongue. I should have liked to get up and 
run out of the chapel, but I dared not. 

I was the last to receive communion. I could see 
sideways how the other two clasped their hands and 
bowed their heads down on the altar rails when they 
had taken the host as they had been taught to do. 
They did it perfectly, without the slightest hesitation, 
but when my turn came I felt I could hardly breathe 



136 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD 

because my heart was thumping so. I imagined 
that when the priest put the host on my tongue it 
would suddenly grow heavy and jerk my head down 
and make me knock my chin against the altar rails. 
When he did put it there I felt nothing at all but 
something light and tasteless on my tongue. But I 
was so frightened that there seemed to be a mist 
before my eyes and a buzzing in my ears, and the 
priest appeared to fade away through the mist and 
up the altar steps again like a spirit. I forgot what 
I had to do. I did not clasp my hands and bow my 
head in the right manner, and I did not get up and 
follow the others back to the prie-Dieu as we had 
rehearsed it. I knelt there till a nun came and 
touched me on the shoulder. When I got up the 
mist in front of my eyes was so thick and the buzzing 
in my ears so loud that I did not know which way 
to go, and the nun led me back to the prie-Dieu like 
a blind girl. But when I knelt down my eyes grew 
suddenly clear again, the noise in my head ceased, 
and everything seemed strangely quiet. I could feel 
the host on the middle of my tongue, and for a 
moment I forgot how it had come there and what I 
ought to do with it. Then I remembered that I had 
made my first communion, that Christ was with me, 
and that I ought to welcome Him. But I did not 
feel as though the little lump of melting w T afer could 



THE CONVENT 1 37 

be Christ. Then I remembered that supposing it 
really were Christ it might slip down my throat 
without my having said a word to Him, and the 
chance would be gone. The thought made me so 
nervous that I suddenly felt a stiffening in my throat 
and my jaws seemed tightly fixed and as rigid as iron. 
I thought I was about to choke. I clutched the 
prie-Dieu, and my forehead grew wet with perspira- 
tion. When I found that nothing happened and 
that there was no danger of my choking if I kept my 
tongue still and let the host lie quietly on it, I recovered 
a little and tried to say the Act of Adoration I had 
learnt by heart. But I could not remember it. 
The host was slipping right to the back of my tongue, 
and all of a sudden I clutched at the prie-Dieu again 
with my heart beating wildly and gave a strangled 
gulp and the host slipped down my throat. I was 
glad that it had gone down safely and that I had not 
choked or screamed. As it went it left a flavour in 
my mouth like that of the wafers that are eaten with 
ices, and when I tasted that I suddenly felt sure it 
was not Christ. I felt as certain as if God Himself 
had bent down and whispered it to me. I seemed 
to wake suddenly out of a dream. I was not 
frightened any longer. I was surprised that I had 
been so frightened. I looked round me and the 
chapel had grown somehow different. It no longer 



138 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD 

seemed holy and mysterious. The priest seemed to 
be just an ordinary man reading out of ordinary 
books and moving ordinary things about the altar. 
It seemed strange for him to be doing it all so 
solemnly with so much ceremony. The altar seemed 
like an ordinary table and the candles like ordinary 
candles with nothing sacred about them. The 
statues of the Virgin and St. Joseph seemed to have 
turned into great staring dolls. I suddenly felt sure 
that it was all a mistake to think there was anything 
mysterious about the priest and the things he did at 
mass. I longed to speak to somebody of this feeling, 
to see if they could understand it too. I could not 
imagine why I had never noticed it before. I knelt 
there and looked at the priest without attempting to 
pray, and when the time came for us to rise and leave 
the chapel I was not nervous. I got up and walked 
down the aisle looking about me and swinging my 
arms, instead of casting down my eyes and clasping 
the prayer-book in my hands with the rosary hanging 
down as I ought to have done. I did not feel at all 
as if anything unusual had been happening to me, 
and when the people came to congratulate us I felt 
as if they were making an absurd fuss about nothing. 
I felt inclined to say to them, " You are making a 
mistake. It is not Christ at all. Going to com- 
munion is not really wonderful." 



THE CONVENT 1 39 

But I said nothing. I hardly spoke all day. I 
felt as if I had discovered some great truth that I 
alone knew and that other people would not be 
capable of understanding if I told them. 

I woke up in the night and thought about it again, 
and it seemed strange to be free not to believe 
without trying to force oneself to do so. It was a 
great relief — as though a heavy weight had fallen 
from my shoulders. 

Next day, when I was going from one classroom to 
another, I met Reverend Mother and several of the 
other nuns walking down the corridor. Reverend 
Mother was walking in the middle, because she was 
the most important, and there were two or three 
nuns on either side of her. Whenever she spoke 
they bent their heads towards her to show respect 
and made no interruption. 

I tried to slip into a classroom, but Reverend 
Mother smiled and beckoned to me and I went up 
to them. But I did not stand in the middle of the 
corridor. I squeezed up to the wall and pressed my 
back against it. I felt safer like that and not so shy. 

The nuns stopped and stood round me in a circle, 
and Reverend Mother said, " Well, my little first 
communicant, don't you feel very happy at the 
blessing our dear Lord has conferred upon you ? " 

I looked down on the ground and pressed harder 



140 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD 

against the wall and made no answer. I was not 
frightened. Even the nuns seemed ordinary and 
not solemn and mysterious as they had seemed 
before I gave up making myself believe things. I 
glanced up for a moment at the white parts of their 
dresses that had always seemed so pure and stately, 
and I thought to myself that they were only made of 
the same stuff as collars and cuffs, but in a different 
shape, and that their veils and robes were of common 
black material that any one could make a dress of. 
It seemed to me most strange to have such thoughts 
and not to correct them a moment later. I was glad 
there was no need to. 

It was rude of me not to answer, and Reverend 
Mother thought I was shy. She said again, " Did 
it not make a most blessed and wonderful impression 
on your soul when our Lord came to visit you in 
person ? " 

At first I thought I would not reply, but then I 
was seized with a wicked curiosity to see what the 
nuns would look like if I said something blasphemous. 
I was standing on one foot with the other bent back 
on to the hot- water pipes behind me. I changed on 
to the other foot and backed against the wall again 
and looked down on the ground and said, " Not very 
much." 

But the next minute I peeped up again because I 



THE CONVENT 141 

wanted so intensely to see what effect my words 
would have. 

It seemed as if each of them moved all over with 
surprise, and they opened their eyes wider and 
looked at me as if they could not take their eyes 
from my face. 

And Reverend Mother said, " But, my child, did 
you not feel the inestimable blessing our Lord 
conferred upon you when He deigned in person to 
enter into your body ? " 

I changed on to the other foot again and looked 
terribly guilty and heretical, but I said again, " Not 
very much." 

Then they seemed to grow so stiff with horror that 
I was almost afraid. I felt as if we had all been 
standing there for hours and no one spoke. 

Then Reverend Mother said, " But, my child, do 
you not believe in the Blessed Sacrament ? " 

I felt my face growing redder and redder, and I 
wriggled against the wall and then stood on one foot 
again and looked down on the ground and said, 
" Not very much." 

I could feel them grow still more petrified. I was 
still so full of impious curiosity that I could not help 
peeping up again to see what they looked like. They 
were still staring as before. Not one of them had 
moved. 



142 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD 

Then Reverend Mother said, " I must see to this. 
I must speak to her," and she came out from the 
rest and put her hand on my shoulder, and the other 
nuns turned and went away without speaking. They 
looked like long, black shadows floating down the 
corridor, not one of them turning their heads or 
speaking to the others, and their footsteps were 
inaudible. 

Reverend Mother kept her hand on my shoulder 
and took me into one of the classrooms. She shut 
the door behind us and then turned round to me and 
said, " What was the meaning of your words to me 
just now ? " 

I said, " Which words ? " 

And Reverend Mother said, " Is it possible that 
you don't believe the Blessed Sacrament to be the 
body and blood of our Lord ? Did you not believe 
that our blessed Lord Himself had come to you when 
you made your first communion ? " 

I said, " At first I did a little ; then I didn't." 

Reverend Mother was so shocked that she could 
not speak for a moment. Then she said, " But what 
has come over you ? What has caused you to lose 
your faith in such a terrible manner ? " 

I said, " Because the priest carries it about so 
much." 

Reverend Mother asked, " Carries what about ? " 



THE CONVENT 1 43 

And I said, " The sacred host. He could not do 
it if it were our Lord." 

And she said, " But don't you know that the 
catechism tells us that it is done by the power of God, 
to Whom nothing is impossible or difficult ? " 

I was nervous no longer. I felt I was growing 
audacious. 

I said, " God would not want to." 

And she asked, " Would not want to what ? " 

I said, " To change our Lord into bread and wine 
and let Him be shut up in the tabernacle." 

Reverend Mother was still more shocked, and I 
went on arguing. I said if it was true about the 
Blessed Sacrament the priest would not dare to 
snore so that our Lord could hear him, and the 
sacristan would not dust the tabernacle with a 
feather brush as though it were furniture." 

Reverend Mother asked me what I meant about 
the priest's snoring, and I told her, and I said that 
the sacristan did not make nearly such a deep bow 
in front of the tabernacle when the chapel was empty 
as when there were people watching him. He made 
a careless little bob and went by. I had noticed that 
too, when I was meditating in the chapel. 

Reverend Mother stared at me again for a moment, 
speechlessly, and then she said that in her whole life 
she had never been so surprised and horrified. She 



144 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD 

said she must have time to consider, and ask a 
priest's advice before she could decide what to say, 
or what to do with me. 

She told me to go away, and as I was going she 
asked me if I had spoken to any of my companions 
in that manner. I said I had not, and she made me 
give her my word of honour not to do so. I gave it, 
but I noticed that, after that, during all the recreations 
a nun kept me by her side and would not let me mix 
with the other girls. That was because the nun was 
afraid I should forget my promise and put my 
companions into spiritual danger. 

Next morning I was sent for into Reverend 
Mother's room. Reverend Mother and the Mother 
Prefect were there together. 

Reverend Mother said that after considering the 
matter for some time, she and the other nuns had 
made up their minds that it would be better for me 
to leave the convent at the end of the term. They 
did not wish to expel me, because that would put a 
slur on my character which I had done nothing to 
deserve. She said I was a good, industrious girl, 
but that they thought it would be better for me not 
to mingle with the other girls under their charge, 
because I had taken to such strange ways of thinking 
and speaking. Did I understand ? And I said, 
" Yes, Reverend Mother." 



THE CONVENT 145 

And she said they would write to my relations and 
recommend them to send me to a certain convent in 
Germany. 

Then she said, quite kindly, with no sign of anger, 
" The discipline in that convent is good, and perhaps 
they will do better for you there than we have been 
able to do, though believe me, my child, we have 
always tried to do our best." 

She reminded me again that I had promised not 
to speak about the matter to the other girls, and I did 
not, and no one knew why I was going to leave. 

When the time came I was extremely sorry to go, 
and the nuns said it grieved them to lose me. But 
they were quite sure that I should regain my religion 
in the German convent, and that it would be better 
for me in the end. 

So I left, and went to Germany, and never saw the 
convent or the nuns again. But I often thought 
about them, and I shall always be grateful to them 
for having been so kind to me. 



CHAPTER IV 

I GO TO GERMANY 
I 

I WENT to Germany at the end of July, in order 
to spend some time with a German lady, Frau G., 
before the beginning of the term in the German 
convent. Frau G. lived in a little town on the banks 
of the Rhine, and I was taken there by a young 
English lady who was going to be a governess near 
the same place. She came to see me before starting, 
and we made friends. She looked so pretty and 
dainty that she reminded me of a china tea-cup in a 
best service. Her name was Miss H. She had blue 
eyes that curved up a little at the corners. Her lips 
curved upwards too, and when she smiled you could 
see a dimple in each cheek where it began to turn 
pink. When we started on the journey she wore a 
tiny black hat to show how golden her hair was, and 
some clean, frilly lace round her neck as white as 
snow. I thought her so pretty that I sat opposite 
her in the train and stared at her all the time, and a 
melancholy-looking German gentleman who got into 




, 



Mrs. Soskice (1915) 

(Juliet Hueffer) 
After a drawing by Gertrude E. Thomson 



I GO TO GERMANY 147 

the same carriage seemed to fall in love with her and 
stared too. 

She did not mind my staring, but she disliked the 
German gentleman because he seemed so sentimental. 
He had a fat red face, and dull blue eyes, and a very 
sweet smile, and his hair-dressing was complicated. 
His head was shaved and covered with a stiff yellow 
down, and he had a little spiky moustache that 
stood out on both sides as stiffly and sharply as two 
darning needles. 

Miss H. held up a newspaper in front of her face 
to hide it from him, and if she lowered it even for a 
moment the German gentleman drooped all over 
and smiled a melting smile as though imploring her 
to love him. 

When we left the train to go on board the ship he 
followed close behind, and when we had stowed 
away our things and taken our places on deck we 
found that he had got a seat next to us. 

It was a cold, windy day, although it was summer, 
and when we started the ship began to rock. I had 
never been on a ship before, and Miss H. thought I 
might be nervous. She put her arm round me and 
kissed me. When I saw that we were moving 
further and further from the land I was startled, and 
then I longed to put my arms out and cling on to it. 
My throat began to ache and tears came into my 



148 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD 

eyes and hid the coast from me. I hid my face 
against Miss H. and cried. She leant over me and 
wiped my eyes and waved her handkerchief to 
England and said to me, " Look up and say good-bye 
to England bravely, and when we come back we 
shall find her faithfully waiting for us." 

I raised my eyes, but the further we went the more 
my heart ached, and I looked back until I couldn't 
see a trace of England. 

Presently it grew rougher and Miss H. wrapped 
a rug round me and told me not to be alarmed 
if she was ill. The gentleman in love got up and 
staggered from one pillar to another until he got 
downstairs. 

Miss H. was glad that he was gone. She said, 
" What an odious man ! " 

But in a few minutes he was back again looking 
more tender than before. He stood near us, swaying 
and clutching at a railing with one hand, and he gave 
us a little bow with his head and began to talk. He 
could be silent no longer. He said, in German, 
" Will the gracious Miss permit me to give her some 
advice ? " 

We couldn't help staring at him and wondering 
what he was going to say, and he said, " Perhaps the 
gracious Miss is not aware that upon the ocean 
repleteness is ever advisable ? " 



I GO TO GERMANY 149 

At first we could not understand what he meant, 
but afterwards he explained and made it clear. 

He said that he had been down below and eaten 
everything he could lay hands upon. He had even 
eaten pies and sandwiches that other people wanted 
to buy, and had drunk a great many glasses of beer. 
He was replete with things to eat and drink. He 
said that on a ship that was the best thing to do, 
because then if Nature made demands upon you it 
was not so difficult to comply. 

He looked at Miss H. and smiled brightly, and 
bowed with his head again and said, " Jawohl ! " 
(German). 

But she stared the other way and would not take 
any interest. 

Then he sat down on my side (there were some 
ropes on the other), and leant forward and looked 
at Miss H. round me and said, " Will the gracious 
Miss do me the honour to drink a glass of beer with 
me ? " 

Miss H. looked the other way and pretended not 
to understand. Then he leant forward again and 
said, coaxingly, " Drink then a glass of beer, Miss. 
Beer is, in such cases, an unspeakable consolation/ ' 

He looked full of affection, but Miss H. said 
stiffly, " No, thank you." 

But he could not bear to be so coldly repulsed ; he 



150 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD 

longed to do something to show his love. He said, 
" Eat then something, Miss. The pork pies are 
remarkable. With a pork pie in the stomach can 
one peacefully travel further." 

But she said again, in an icy manner (she was 
beginning to feel sea-sick), " No, thank you." 

And he said, " Gott ! " (" God ! "). 

He looked very sad. He ought, of course, to have 
behaved in a more romantic manner, being in love. 
But he probably did not know. 

Miss H. was very ill, and we were extremely glad 
to get off the ship into the train. We went into a 
carriage marked " Damen," where no gentleman 
would ever dare to follow. The gentleman in love 
would have been glad to, but he knew it was im- 
possible, so he put his portmanteau down in the 
corridor outside our window and stood like a statue 
staring in. Miss H. felt so ill that she was quite 
indifferent. She leant back in a corner with her 
smelling-salts to her nose and paid no attention. 
After a little while she went to sleep and I grew 
tired of sitting by myself, so I got up and slipped 
into the corridor past the German gentleman and 
looked out of one of the windows. But he followed 
me and began to talk. He said, sadly, in English, 
" English girls iss pretty, but, my Gott, how colt ! 
One tries one's best, but cannot please them." 



I GO TO GERMANY 151 

I said nothing and the German gentleman grew 
more excited, and said, " It iss goot ven ze man shall 
try to please ze voman and she iss pleased, but it iss 
not goot ven ze man shall try to please ze voman and 
she iss not pleased." 

Then he frowned and went into a carriage and sat 
down in a corner and folded his arms, and left his 
portmanteau in the corridor where people tumbled 
over it. I think he forgot it because he was so 
grieved that Miss H. had not returned his affection. 

I thought Germany a very pretty country. The 
grass and trees and hedges were thick and green and 
tidy. They looked expensive, somehow, as if a lot 
of money had been spent upon them. The cottages 
and farmhouses had a bright and comfortable 
appearance, and there were trees weighed down with 
apples standing along the roadsides. Sometimes 
we passed a little girl walking along a road in a clean 
black and white checked dress, with yellow hair 
hanging in a pigtail tied with a ribbon at the end. 
When she heard the train coming she would turn 
and wave her hand and smile, and I thought I should 
like to wear my hair in a pigtail instead of loose upon 
my shoulders. Every now and then at a crossing a 
tidy woman stood near the rails in a checked apron 
waving a flag. Once we passed a fox standing alone 
in the middle of a field with his head turned back 



152 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD 

over his shoulder to listen to the train. Sometimes 
I saw oxen pulling carts. The men in the carts had 
big, peaceful faces, and the oxen were fat and neat 
and looked expensive too, like the grass and trees 
and hedges. It all seemed like a painted toy that I 
should have liked to play with. 

In the afternoon we arrived at K., a large, busy 
town. The streets seemed cleaner and the wheels 
smoother than in London. We were to pass the 
night there, before taking another train to B. 

In K. everybody's hair is extremely tidy, and their 
boots are big and nicely blacked. Most people have 
round faces and straight backs and staring eyes. 
The gentlemen have beautifully brushed coats and 
keep on bowing and taking their hats off to the 
ladies, and the ladies hold their heads stiff and look 
hostile at the gentlemen. 

We were met at the station by a German gentle- 
man, the uncle of one of Miss H.'s pupils. He was a 
little, fat, elderly gentleman, with a spiky moustache, 
and round black eyes with a network of wrinkles at 
the corners and no whites to be seen. He had a big 
cigar in his mouth and wore a nicely-kept top hat a 
little on one side, and a very thick coat with a big 
velvet collar that reached half-way up the back of 
his head. 

His name was Baron von Something (I did not 



I GO TO GERMANY 1 53 

catch his right name). He was evidently proud 
because he was so important. When he told the 
porters what to do with our luggage they bowed up 
and down and said, " Ja, Herr Baron " (" Yes, Mr. 
Baron ") and, " Nein, Herr Baron" (" No, Mr. 
Baron "), and when he walked he wagged his coat 
tails from side to side, and if anybody got into his 
way he waved them out of it with his stick. 

When we were outside the station he told us that 
he had two wonderfully beautiful houses in a wonder- 
fully beautiful street, but he couldn't take us to them 
because his wife had quarrelled with him and for- 
bidden it. He could not bring his carriage either, 
because his mother-in-law had quarrelled with him 
too and forbidden that. So we got into a hired 
carriage and drove about, as he said to see the town, 
but he showed us nothing but restaurants. He was 
very interested in restaurants, and whenever we 
passed a specially big one he made the carriage stop 
and stared at it and said was there anything in 
London to equal that ? He told the coachman to 
drive some way out of the town so that we might see 
the restaurant he liked best of all. When we came 
to it we got out of the carriage and walked down a long 
hall with marble columns on each side, and waiters 
with napkins kept bowing up and down and saying, 
" Tag, Herr Baron " (" Good-day, Mr. Baron "). 



154 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD 

Then we came to an open-air place like a circus, 
with little chairs and tables stretching in circles down 
a slope until they came to a bandstand in the middle. 
It looked something like a picture of the amphi- 
theatre in Rome. 

The Baron admired this very much. He stood 
staring at it for a long time, until we were so tired 
that we sat down near one of the little tables to wait 
for him. He went on staring with his hat off as 
though he were in church. At last he sighed, put 
his hat on and said, " Da kann ein Mensch sich aber 
glucklich fuhlen " (" There can a man feel himself 
happy "). 

Then he told us that one could sit at the little 
tables till late into the night, and order beer or choco- 
late or anything one had a fancy for. He said there 
was nothing one could mention or imagine that the 
restaurant could not provide, and that there was no 
restaurant in the civilised world to be compared 
to it. 

For some time after we got back into the carriage 
he said nothing. He seemed dreadfully depressed. 
But then he recovered and told the cabman to drive 
us to another restaurant. It was in a big square 
with a very tall church in the middle. We went all 
over it. We looked into the big dining-rooms and 
the kitchens, and wine cellars and cupboards, and 



I GO TO GERMANY 1 55 

into some little private rooms, and the people in them 
were angry, but the Baron paid no attention. The 
waiters kept bowing up and down and saying, " Tag, 
Herr Baron," just as the other waiters had done. 
The Baron said that this restaurant was the second 
best in the civilised world. 

Then we sat in a balcony overlooking the square 
and drank chocolate and ate tarts with piles of 
cream on them. The Baron was still very depressed. 
Suddenly he banged his fist on the table and pointed 
to the church in the middle of the square and said 
he would build a church four times as high if his 
mother-in-law would only die. He said, in German, 
" My wife I can manage, but the old cat " 

He said, would we believe that if his mother-in- 
law came down the street and saw him sitting in the 
balcony with two young ladies she would climb up 
and pull him off by the hair of his head. 

I was very sorry for him. I understood now why 
he seemed so depressed. The more he talked about 
his " Schwiege-Mama " (mother-in-law) the angrier 
he grew, and all the while he continued eating tarts 
and cream and drinking cups of chocolate. He went 
on telling us about his mother-in-law. 

He said that his wife was wonderfully beautiful, as 
stately as a queen and that she weighed twelve stone, 
but that his mother-in-law weighed more and 



156 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD 

thought she was more beautiful than the wife, and 
that whenever they went out the mother-in-law 
insisted on wearing jewellery that the wife ought to 
have worn, and then they quarrelled and both 
scolded him. The mother-in-law was continually 
going to the most expensive photographers and being 
photographed in the wife's jewellery, and when the 
wife saw the photographs she cried bitterly and 
quarrelled with her mother, and then they both 
scolded him. He said his mother-in-law ate more 
than any living woman and that nothing disagreed 
with her, but that she abused him on account of his 
appetite so that he never dared to eat enough in his 
own house. She forbade him to speak to other 
ladies for fear he should give them jewellery that 
otherwise he would have given to his wife, so that 
she could wear it, and when she went out in the 
street she wore such high heels to her shoes that 
little boys followed in a tail behind and made rude 
remarks. He said if it had not been for the 
restaurants where he could escape from them both 
and be at peace he would have hanged himself. 
When he had finished the tarts and chocolate he got 
up and paid the bill, and said he was going to take 
us to another restaurant on the other side of the 
square where he should have dinner. He said that 
sometimes he almost thought this was the best 



I GO TO GERMANY 1 57 

restaurant of all and that was why he had kept it to 
the last. 

There were a number of fashionable people dining 
in the restaurant. They were even tidier than the 
people in the street, and many were very stout. 
They wore their napkins tied round their necks, and 
bent their heads down over their plates and ate 
quickly as though they were afraid the other people 
would finish first and snatch their food away from 
them. 

The Baron was pleased to see so many people 
dining. He thought it proved that the restaurant 
was such a splendid one. He said, in German, 
" Hither can one peacefully bring a good appetite. " 

And he sat and watched them with his eyes 
shining. It was the first time he had looked cheerful. 
He said it had often comforted him in his darkest 
moments with his mother-in-law to think that there 
were places such as this where people could sit and 
enjoy good food with healthy appetites while every- 
thing was being so splendidly managed. 

He ordered dinner for us, but said that he himself 
would take nothing, that he could hardly ever eat. 
I thought to myself that he couldn't very well be 
hungry yet, because he had only just finished the 
tarts and cream and chocolate ; but I said nothing. 

He asked me how much my grandfather had left, 



158 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD 

and I said I didn't know. He asked if he had kept 
an hotel, and I said no, he was an artist, and he 
shook his head as though he were sorry for him, and 
said, " Arme Mensch ! " (" Poor man ! "). 

He went on watching the people eating until at 
last he could resist no longer, and he called the 
waiter and ordered dinner for himself, and tied his 
napkin round his neck, and ducked his head among 
the plates and glasses and began to eat as quickly as 
the others. 

When we left the restaurant the lamps were lit, 
and the square looked very gay and pretty. The air 
was so clear that the lights shone like diamonds, and 
little electric trams were running backwards and 
forwards gleaming like streaks of fire. There was a 
band playing a waltz in the distance, and a great many 
people were strolling about enjoying the fine evening. 

But we drove back to the hotel near the station 
and went to bed. I was glad to go, because I was 
so tired. I had never travelled so far before. 

II 

Frau G.'s house had a long garden in front with 
an avenue of trees leading down to a big iron gate. 
We kissed one another good-bye at the gate. Miss H. 
said I should be braver if I went into the house 
alone, and that she was going to another house in B. 



I GO TO GERMANY 1 59 

and would come and see me very soon. I walked up 
the long avenue to the house. The door was opened 
by a very old servant in a white muslin apron with a 
piece of black lace on her head. Her face was 
pointed and very wrinkled. Her head shook slightly 
and her eyes were dim, and she screwed them up a 
little when she looked at me as if she could not see 
me very plainly. But she smiled kindly at me, and 
said, " Good-day, good-day, good-day, my little 
Fraulein, ,, and hobbled across the hall in front of 
me to a room that looked like a drawing-room. The 
floor was polished, and there were green and red 
woollen mats spread about it, and chairs were 
standing tidily round the walls. At one end of the 
room was a sofa with a rug and table in front of it 
and chairs set round. The sofa and chairs looked 
very stiff and hard. They were covered with pale 
green velvet with a pattern upon it and lots of little 
brass-headed nails all round the edges. 

On one wall was a big picture of the Virgin Mary 
ascending into heaven in blue and gold clothes, the 
same sort of clothes she had worn in the convent in 
London. The heaven was a very bright blue and 
there were a number of golden stars painted on it 
and all over the picture. There were other pictures 
too in broad gilt frames ornamented with leaves and 
bunches of grapes. Some were of young maidens 



l6o CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD 

in flowing scarves, with pink, surprised faces and 
staring eyes. They looked like relations of the 
Blessed Virgin. Others were of dining-room tables 
with bunches of bananas and rhubarb and poultry 
and other things to eat spread out upon them. All 
the pictures looked as if they were freshly painted 
every day. 

I stood on one of the woollen mats (I was afraid 
to stand on the polished floor) and felt very sad and 
lonely. I wished I had never come to Germany. 
But suddenly I heard a sound of somebody breathing 
hard behind me, and I turned round and saw a fat 
little old lady in a black dress with a white lace cap 
on her head. She had a big forehead and a round 
face very fresh and rosy, and her eyes were blue and 
clear. This lady was Frau G. She looked at me 
intently for a time without speaking, and she kept 
on grunting and breathing hard. Then suddenly 
she smiled and her eyes shone and twinkled and made 
her face look kind and merry. She came a step 
nearer and took me in her arms and kissed me on the 
forehead and said, " Liebes Kind ! Liebes Kind ! " 
(" Dear child ! Dear child ! "). 

Her eyes beamed at me so brightly that I did not 
feel lonely any more. 

We sat down opposite one another at the little 
table. Frau G. sat in the armchair and I sat in one 



I GO TO GERMANY l6l 

of the little stiff chairs and we began to talk. At 
first she asked me how old I was, and many questions 
about myself and my relations and my life in my 
uncle's house. Then she asked me how I had 
displeased the nuns in London, and I told her. 
She said that I had been very wrong, that young 
people should not try to argue and decide things for 
themselves, because older people knew what was 
best for them. When people got older and wiser 
and sadder they had many thoughts that only the 
old and sad could understand, but that youth should 
be devoted to preparing for one's vocation in life, 
learning to be thrifty, and growing accustomed to 
discipline as the best preparation for future suffering 
and disappointment. Then she stopped and nodded 
her head and said, " So," but though she smiled 
her eyes had no twinkle in them now, but looked 
grave and sad. Then she said, in German, " And 
how much money did your grandpapa leave behind 
him when he died ? " 

I said I didn't know, and she asked, " How many 
houses did he have ? " 

I said one house (at a time), and she said, " And 
how many servants did he keep ? " 

I told her, and she said, " Did he not then save 
some money ? " 

I said I didn't know ; I'd never asked any one ; 



1 62 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD 

but I'd never seen him saving any, and she said, 
" God ! How thriftless are the English." 

Then she told me that in Germany everybody 
saved up money and spent as little as they could, 
and that was why they all got on so well. She said 
that she still had some of the savings of her youth to 
leave to her nephews and nieces and god-children, 
and that she made her own woollen mats and bed 
linen and embroidered the table covers and curtains 
to save money, and that the pictures, although they 
looked expensive, had been painted for nothing by a 
maiden lady who had not been able to get a husband. 
She had painted the pictures to fit the frames that 
had been left by a relation in his will. 

When she told me that she breathed hard and 
grunted again and smiled and said, " So ! " 

Then she asked me if I had a money-box, and I 
said no, and she said, God ! she would get me one, 
and that I should save up all the money I could in 
order to buy house linen when I got married. 

Then she got up and went across the room and 
opened a cupboard and showed me rows of little 
money-boxes with labels on them, and she said that 
they were the money-boxes of the village maidens 
of B. who were saving money to buy linen when they 
got married, and that if they had not enough no man 
would want to marry them. There was another 



I GO TO GERMANY 1 63 

cupboard with money-boxes in which the women 
who were going to have babies saved up the money 
to buy clothes for them. She said that no baby was 
born in B. until its mother had enough money in her 
box to pay for its clothes and bed and pin-cushion 
basket. On the bottom shelf of the cupboard were 
the money-boxes of the babies themselves and a pile 
of prayer-books with pictures in them of God and 
the saints, very foreign looking. Whenever a baby 
was born in B. Frau G. gave it a money-box and a 
prayer-book, so that it should have a chance of 
providing for its body and soul. 

When she had finished speaking she smiled and 
grunted and twinkled her eyes again and said, " So ! " 

I thought I ought to appear interested, and I asked 
if the babies liked their money-boxes. But Frau G. 
said that liking had nothing to do with it, that 
people had to do many things they did not like for 
their own good, and that everybody's first object 
ought to be to save, because even a pin saved at the 
proper time might in the end be the means of saving 
a life. She didn't say how. 

Then she came back and sat down near the table 
again and said that in England people spent too 
much money and youth was not disciplined. She 
said that once, years ago, an English boy had come 
to B. and put his feet upon her sofa cushions and had 



164 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD 

spent his pocket-money without asking permission. 
She had never forgotten it, and she was not surprised 
at my behaviour in the convent, because ever since 
she had known that boy she had said that England 
was not the proper place in which to bring up 
children. Now that I had come to Germany I 
should get my religion back again and learn not to 
argue. 

Then she smiled and her eyes twinkled and she 
said, " So ! " 

III 

Frau G.'s villa was on the banks of the Rhine. On 
one side it had a balcony right over the river, and 
there was a big shady garden behind with a tiny lake 
and fountain in it. There were curving mountains 
on the other side of the water, and a little village with 
a tiny church in the middle, and a ferry-boat went 
backwards and forwards between the two banks. 
The village looked like a toy village from our side 
and the church like a toy church. I used to lie on 
the balcony and look across the Rhine and imagine 
that there were wooden dolls with black hair and 
bright red cheeks sitting in the cottages and walking 
up and down the little streets and going into the 
little church when the bell rang. It rang on Sundays 
and sometimes in the evenings, and when the air was 



I GO TO GERMANY 1 65 

still the sound came floating right across the river. 
There were mountains on our side of the river too, 
and beautiful green fields and valleys. 

Frau G. took me for long walks into the mountains. 
She was never tired. She wore a short net cape and 
a little black bonnet with strings tied under her chin, 
and she stumped along quickly in front of me, 
thumping her umbrella on the ground and wagging 
her shoulders a little from side to side as she moved. 
She never went slower even up hill, but when it was 
very steep she stopped every few minutes and turned 
to look back for me with her cheeks very rosy and 
tiny beads of perspiration on her chin. I was some- 
times quite a long way behind and she stood and 
waited for me, and when I came up she smiled and 
gave a little nod and twinkled her eyes and said, 
" So ! " and then went on again. 

Every now and then on the mountain side we came 
to a little beer-house with a garden in front with 
chairs and tables where you could sit down to get 
cool and drink some beer or syrup and eat sand- 
wiches. Whenever we stopped at one the landlord 
himself always came out and bowed to Frau G. and 
said, " Good-day, Mrs. Town-Councillor.' ' 

And Frau G. said, " Good-day, Mr. Landlord," 
and pointed at me and twinkled her eyes and said, 
" This is a little English girl." 



1 66 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD 

Then the landlord bowed again most politely and 
said, " Ach, so-o-o ? And how does it please you 
in Germany, Fraulein ? " 

And I said, " Thank you, well." 

Sometimes when we were walking in the mountains 
we met peasant women coming down the path 
carrying wood or bundles of some kind. They were 
always clean and tidy and their faces were kind, 
though they often looked worn and sorrowful. 

Frau G. would stop and say, " Good-day, Frau . 

How goes it then at home ? " 

And they would tell her. If they were in trouble 
tears came into their eyes as they spoke. Some of 
them were very poor and toiled hard and had many 
little children to take care of. Frau G. would always 
say to them, " Come, then, to my house, and we will 
see what can be done." 

And then when she had stumped on quite a long 
way and I thought she had forgotten all about it I 
used to hear her saying to herself, " Gott ! Die 
arme Frau ! " (" God ! The poor woman ! "). 

And there would be tears in her own eyes as well. 

When we walked in the village or on the banks of 
the Rhine troops of little children would come 
running to meet us. Some had brown eyes, but 
most had blue, and they nearly all had round faces 
and checked pinafores. They kissed Frau G.'s 



I GO TO GERMANY 1 67 

hands and called out all together like little birds 
piping, " Good-day, Mrs. Town- Councillor ! " 

And she would say, " Good-day, dear children. 
How goes it then at school ? " or " How much have 
you in your money-boxes ? " 

And they would tell her, and her eyes would 
twinkle and she'd point to me and say, " This is a 
little English girl." 

And they were always pleased and interested. 
Some of them had never seen a little English girl 
before, and they would call other children and say 
to them, " Come quickly ! Here is a little English 
girl ! " 

And then more would come running up and stand 
round and look at me. 

The little girls would say, " Does one then wear 
the hair like that in England, Fraulein ? " 

They meant loose on the shoulders as I had mine. 

I said, " Yes." 

And they said, " We wear little pigtails." 

And then they turned their heads round to show 
me their little pigtails. 

Some of them came behind me and stood on tip-toe 
and stroked my hair and said, " Ach, how beautiful ! 
Ach, how fine ! " 

And one tiny girl lifted her baby brother up to 
me and it stroked my cheek with its soft little hand 



1 68 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD 

and said like the others but in a babyish way, " Aie, 
how beautiful ! Aie, how fine ! " 

After mass on Sunday, while we sat waiting for the 
country people to leave the church, the children all 
came trooping down the aisle together, and when 
they saw me they whispered to one another, " Look, 
there's the little English girl," and then they smiled 
at me, and some made a little bob to me as they went 
past. I liked to go to mass just to see the children. 

On Sunday afternoons we sometimes went for a 
long walk by the Rhine to a very ancient village 
where there was an inn with a terrace along the river 
bank set out with chairs and tables. Many people 
came to drink beer and chocolate and eat cakes there 
on Sunday afternoons. Some walked from other 
villages ; some came from the town C. in waggons, 
and others came across the river in ferry-boats. 
They were very cheerful. Each family sat round a 
separate table. There were sometimes an old white- 
haired grandfather and grandmother, and a younger 
father and mother, and sons and daughters (a great 
many) down to tiny children. Each family began 
to sing as soon as it had had something to eat and 
drink, and they sang very seriously, as though they 
had promised to do so and were determined not 
to stop. Sometimes the grandfathers and grand- 
mothers sang too in weak old voices, but sometimes 



I GO TO GERMANY 1 69 

they only smiled and listened and wagged their 
heads. The fathers and mothers sang loudest and 
longest. The songs were always love songs. When 
the young girls had eaten all the cakes they wanted 
they got up and walked about the terrace between 
the tables in threes and fours with their arms around 
each others* waists. Some had thick plaits hanging 
down behind, and some had coiled their plaits round 
their heads and placed flowers in them. They had 
white muslin dresses on and bare arms, and their 
faces were pink and pretty. I used to think I should 
like to make friends with them, but I was too shy, 
because they seemed much more grown up than I. 
Once when a group was passing our table Frau G. 
stopped them and said to them, " See, here is a little 
English girl/' And they stopped in a row with their 
arms intertwined and looked at me with their gentle 
eyes. I was ashamed to look at them at first, but 
afterwards I grew more courageous. 

They said, " Is it then beautiful in England, 
Fraulein ? " 

And I said, in German, though I was very shy at 
speaking German to them, " Yawohl ! Wunder- 
schon ! " (" Yes, rather. Wonderfully beautiful ! "). 

And then I looked down on the ground again, 
because I knew my eyes were filling with tears. 
Whenever I thought of England I could see the 



170 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD 

white cliffs and the grey sea as I saw them when the 
ship was taking me away. 

I did not cry, but the German girls could see how 
near I was to tears, and they said, cheerfully, " It is 
right beautiful in Germany too, and when the 
Fraulein is a little accustomed to it she will love 
Germany too and no longer be homesick. " 

I felt grateful to them for speaking to me so kindly 
and looking at me in such a friendly way. It made 
me feel less timid about going among the strange 
girls in the convent. I asked Frau G. if the convent 
girls would be like these, but she was quite offended. 
She said that these girls were daughters of the shop- 
keepers of C, but the girls in the convent were of 
good family and many of them had titles. I was 
very sorry. 

On Sunday evenings the young men marched 
through the village to attract the girls to the dancing 
hall. The young men had straight backs and 
healthy faces and looked very handsome in their 
Sunday clothes. The girls came out of the houses 
and followed them arm in arm, in clean cotton 
dresses and white stockings, and with smooth shining 
hair. Once I went and peeped in at the ' * tanzboden ' ' 
(dancing-floor), and saw them dancing. The girls 
looked heavy but very joyful. When the young men 
wanted the girls to dance with them they beckoned 



I GO TO GERMANY 171 

with their heads as much as to say, " Hi ! Come 
over here ! " or with their hands, and the girls were 
not offended but went up to them, and they danced 
till they were wet with perspiration, and then they 
stopped and wiped their faces and said, " Gott ! 
Wie mann schwitzt ! " (" God ! How one sweats ! "), 
and sat down at the little tables round the walls to 
drink beer and cool down again. 

On church festivals big boats full of pilgrims went 
floating down the Rhine to a holy shrine not far from 
B. Some of the pilgrims knelt and prayed and 
others sang, and red and blue and golden banners 
waved. When it was a fine day and the sky was 
blue and the sun shining the boats looked like 
painted boats in picture-books, and we could hear 
the pilgrims' voices plainly as they passed the house. 

Once I went to see the shrine with a German boy 
who had come from Berlin to pass his holidays in B. 
We crossed the river in the ferry boat and walked 
along the bank on the other side. The German boy 
was very noisy. As we went along he kept throwing 
things up into the air and catching them, and running 
up and down the bank and shouting. He had tight 
little brown curls and a round face and bright sly- 
looking brown eyes. He was dressed in a blue 
alpaca sailor suit trimmed with rows and rows of 
white braid, and his knickers were very wide and 



172 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD 

bound with elastic at the knee. He wore a little 
round straw hat with a bow behind, and a sandwich 
bag hanging from his shoulder on a long strap. 
When he had nothing else to throw into the air he 
threw the sandwich bag. He said that Frau G. was 
his godmother, and that one of his uncles was a 
millionaire, and that when they died they would 
leave him a great deal of money. He said that if I 
had as much money as he had it would be a good 
thing for us to marry, because people who had the 
same amount of money generally did so, that they 
shouldn't quarrel afterwards about which had most. 
I said that when I grew up I was going to marry an 
Englishman. He said that Englishmen were as false 
as cats, and I was offended. I said that their hair- 
dressing was much more becoming than Germans' 
because they didn't make their hair stand up all over 
their heads like porcupines' quills. 

He said, " Das ist ya schneidig " (" But that is 
smart "). 

I said I thought it was ugly, and he was offended 
and said that when he grew up he was going to be an 
officer and make his hair stand on end, and that many 
frauleins with lots of money would be glad to marry 
him, but that if one of them was an English fraulein 
he wouldn't marry her, because English frauleins had 
red hair and teeth sticking out in front. 



I GO TO GERMANY 1 73 

Then we were both offended and ceased speaking. 
When we got to the shrine we found a large crowd 
of pilgrims there and lots of little stalls with rosaries 
and holy pictures on them, and women calling out to 
everybody that passed to come and buy some. We 
looked at the stalls and the German boy forgot that 
we were not on speaking terms and said that all the 
things were " dummes zeug " (" rubbish "), and that 
only foolish people spent their money on them. 
Then we went to look at the famous miraculous 
statue of the Blessed Virgin that stood in a niche and 
mended people's arms and legs and cured their 
illnesses. It was made of wood and looked very old 
and battered. Its face was an unhealthy yellow 
colour and there was a crack down one side of its 
mouth. I did not think much of it. I had seen 
others that looked much more capable. But you 
can't go by looks, and when once a person is famous 
it doesn't make much difference. 

There were crutches fastened to the wall and 
spectacles and medicine bottles which had been left 
there by pilgrims to show their gratitude for miracles, 
or sent there when they died or when the doctor said 
they did not need them any longer. The German 
boy said that was " dummes zeug " as well, and that 
the stories of the miracles had been made up for the 
peasants to believe, because they were too stupid to 



174 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD 

understand anything else. He said that he did not 
believe a word of it, but he pretended to, because if he 
did not his godfather and godmother would not leave 
him the money they were going to if he did believe. 
I had no faith in the miracles either, but I did not 
tell him so, because I did not like him well enough. 
I was angry with him for saying that the peasants 
were so stupid. Other people, who are not peasants, 
believe in miraculous cures and visions and spirits, 
and they are not considered stupid. I was sorry for 
the poor people who had come so far to ask the 
Virgin Mary to help them. Some of them were old 
and looked very sad and weak. Many were ill and 
could hardly walk, but limped along on crutches, or 
leaning on their friends. Women had brought sick 
children with them to be cured. One carried a baby 
on a cushion. It lay so still that it looked like a tiny 
waxen figure. She was sitting alone with it, crying 
and kissing it, trying to make it wake and look at her. 
Her tears fell on its face, but it could not hear her or 
feel her tears. I was sorry for her. I knew the 
wooden image could not help the baby ; but if I had 
told her so she would not have believed me. 

IV 

I promised Frau G. before going to the convent 
that I would still go to confession and communion 



I GO TO GERMANY 1 75 

as though I had never fallen into the sin of doubt in 
England. She said that if I did that without ques- 
tioning I should get my religion back again. But I 
did not think I should. When youve once got out 
of the habit of making yourself believe things you 
can't begin again any more than you can make 
yourself feel ill again when you've got over the 
measles. You've had them and they've gone, and 
you can't get them back again. It's the same about 
believing things. 

The uniform of this convent was a black dress and 
a black pelerine to wear over the top part of the 
dress to keep it clean, and a black apron to keep the 
skirt clean, and black over-sleeves to keep the sleeves 
clean. Frau G. took me to a tailor to have the 
things made. It was like getting ready to go to a 
funeral. I had to have new underthings made as 
well, because my English ones had too much em- 
broidery on them to wear in a German convent. 
They put me in danger of the sin of frivolity. I 
was made to brush my hair tightly back off my 
forehead and screw it into a little pigtail behind to 
be insured against the sin of vanity. So I was fairly 
safe. 

It was a very hot morning when we set out for A., 
where the convent was. I wore my black clothes 
and a black cape besides, and a black sailor hat, and 



176 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD 

my pigtail hung down behind. I hated the clothes 
and they made me dreadfully hot. 

A. is a small village with an ancient church and a 
square market-place and big cobble stones in the 
street. Some of the houses were black and white 
and some were grey. There were hills on all sides 
of it, and on top of the highest we could see the 
convent. 

We arrived in A. just at dinner time and we went 
into the hotel to have dinner before going to the 
convent. The waiter showed us into a room with a 
long table down the middle of it. There were a 
number of stout gentlemen sitting at the table with 
their napkins tied round their necks, eating pieces of 
fat boiled bacon. Some had long glossy beards and 
some had spiky moustaches, but the backs of all 
their necks were red and damp with perspiration. 
I was very surprised to see them ; we came upon 
them so unexpectedly. For a moment they made 
me think of the knights at King Arthur's table. 
Frau G. said they were tourists, but I imagined to 
myself that they had been sitting there for ever 
eating lumps of bacon fat and never speaking or 
telling any one where they came from. They did 
not stop eating or look up from their plates for one 
instant when we came in, and we sat down at the end 
of the table and ordered dinner. 



I GO TO GERMANY 1 77 

After dinner we set out to climb the hill to the 
convent. I wished Frau G. would not walk so fast, 
because I was in no hurry to get there. A peasant 
boy with curly hair and a lame leg pushed my box 
on a little barrow behind us. It was so hot that he 
perspired a great deal and he kept stopping every 
few minutes to take his hat off and wipe his face. 

We went up and up, and I began to think we 
should never reach the top, but at last, when we were 
all three panting, we came to the convent. It was 
like climbing up the beanstalk to reach the giant's 
castle. 

There was a broad flight of steps up to the entrance, 
and there were huge black double doors with iron 
handles and a grating in the middle. When we rang 
the bell the grating opened and a big red face looked 
through and stretched its mouth and showed two 
rows of large yellow teeth. I thought to myself it 
was like the face of the giant's cook peeping out 
through the spy-hole to see if there were a tasty 
traveller anywhere near to make into a dinner for 
the giant. But it was a lay sister who only meant to 
smile at us when she showed her teeth. She did it 
again when she had let us in, and she made a little 
bob to Frau G., and said, " Good-day, Mrs. Town- 
Councillor." 

And she smiled again and told the boy with the 



178 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD 

barrow to put my box down and go into the kitchen 
for a glass of milk. Then she said that Reverend 
Mother was waiting for us, and she took us under 
an archway and across a courtyard into the house and 
up a lot of stairs and along a corridor into Reverend 
Mother's room. 

It was a small room, but there were big un- 
curtained windows in each of the four walls. The 
sun was streaming in at the windows and the room 
was as hot as an oven. On one side you could see 
right over the playgrounds and fruit gardens, and all 
the other land that belonged to the convent, and on 
the others you could see the hills with woods on 
them and the valley with a pretty river running 
through it. There was scarcely any furniture in the 
room but a table and some wooden chairs and a 
writing-desk between two of the windows with a big 
crucifix upon it. 

I was very much surprised when I first saw 
Reverend Mother. I thought I had never before 
seen any one so broad and tall. Her face was big 
and red like the lay sister's, with high cheek bones 
and eyes like bright blue stones, and big sharp teeth 
growing one upon another in the front. I thought 
to myself that this room might be the watch-tower of 
the castle and Reverend Mother the giant's wife on 
the look-out to stretch her arms through one of the 



I GO TO GERMANY 1 79 

windows and grab hold of a passer-by in case they 
had nothing to cook for dinner. I should not have 
been surprised to see the giant come striding in with 
his club. 

Reverend Mother had a very deep, noisy voice, 
and when she moved she seemed to fling herself 
about and her skirts and veil whirled round her in 
the air. But she seemed very kind. She talked a 
great deal to Frau G., and kept leaving off in the 
middle to laugh, " ha-ha-ha." It sounded more like 
a big, cheerful dog barking than a nun laughing. 
From time to time she stooped down and smiled 
into my face and patted me on the shoulder, and it 
felt like being rapped with a cricket bat. 

Frau G. and Reverend Mother went on talking 
together for a long time about all sorts of people I 
didn't know, and I sat on a chair and wished I could 
go back to B. with Frau G. instead of staying with 
strangers in the convent. 

At last Frau G. got up to go, and she came over to 
me and kissed me and took my face between her 
hands and said, " So ! So ! Sei ein gutes Kind " 
(" Be a good child "). 

I put my arms round her neck and clung to her ; 
but she put them down again and nodded and smiled 
to me and twinkled her eyes and said, " Goot-pye, 
goot-pye," and I could see that she had tears in her 



l8o CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD 

eyes, although they twinkled. She was sorry to 
leave me all alone like that. I was afraid I should 
begin to cry, but I controlled myself and did not 
give way. 

When Frau G. had gone Reverend Mother tried 
to comfort me. She threw herself about and stooped 
and looked into my face and went on talking loud 
and fast in German. I was so irreverent that I 
could not help imagining that she had suddenly been 
changed by magic from the giantess into a big black 
dog, wriggling and bounding and yelping as though 
it wanted me to play. I tried to put the thought out 
of my head, but I could not. 

She said she would take me to Mother Estelle, who 
was my dormitory mistress, and we went out of the 
room and down the stairs and through a great many 
passages. Reverend Mother kept flinging herself 
along in front of me and turning her head back over 
her shoulder to speak and smile at me, and she still 
reminded me of a big black dog, running down 
towards a river, looking round and barking and 
begging me to throw a stone. 

At last we turned into a long dormitory with rows 
of cubicles in it and clean curtains round each one. 
About half-way down the room we found a cubicle 
with the curtains drawn back, and inside was a nun 
on her knees before a little chest of drawers arranging 



I GO TO GERMANY l8l 

things in it. Reverend Mother said that this was 
my cubicle and that the nun was Mother Estelle. 
She introduced us, and smiled and rubbed her hands, 
and gave another loud and cheerful yelp and threw 
herself down the dormitory and out at the door. I 
was glad she was gone, she was so noisy. 

Mother Estelle was a very tall nun with a narrow 
face and a long thin nose, red at the end. She had 
small round dark blue eyes, set close together, and 
her forehead was puckered in the middle as if she 
worried very often ; as she really did. There were 
thirty girls in her dormitory and she had to see that 
they were tidy and superintend their manners. 
When I went into the cubicle I saw that she had 
unpacked my box and was putting my underclothes 
away in the little chest of drawers. She looked at 
each of the things and puckered up her forehead 
still more and said they were all marked in the wrong 
place, and that English people always marked their 
things in the wrong place. It was really the tailor 
in B . who had made the things and his wife who had 
marked them. But I did not say so. 

Then she shut the chest of drawers and sighed and 
got up off her knees and showed me a little pin- 
cushion on the drawers with four safety-pins stuck 
into it. She said that I must always, at any moment 
of the day or night, know where each of these safety- 



1 82 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD 

pins was, but that I was never to use them except in 
cases of absolute necessity. She said she had pro- 
vided the pins for me because I was English. Ger- 
mans never used pins, but English people had to, 
because their buttons were always bursting and their 
strings coming off. 

Then she looked at my brushes and combs and 
sighed again and said that the brushes were much 
too soft, and that the teeth of the combs were much 
too close together. She said that English people's 
combs always had the teeth too close together, 
because English people never threaded their combs 
with cotton-wool to keep them clean as Germans did. 

Then she puckered up her forehead again and said 
that she was sorry to have an English girl in her 
dormitory, because the English never could be taught 
to do things in the way they ought to do them. 
They never learnt to walk in the proper way or to 
enter a room correctly. The real way was to open 
the door a very little way and to put the right arm 
and the right leg in first, round the door ; then to 
bring the left leg in between the right leg and the 
door ; then, the right arm and the right leg and the 
left leg being safely inside the door, the left arm must 
be brought in and the door handle passed from the 
right hand to the left hand, and the door shut with 
the left hand. She showed me how to do it round 



I GO TO GERMANY 1 83 

the left-hand curtain : I thought to myself that if the 
door opened on the right-hand side one would get 
one's limbs into a dreadful muddle. But Mother 
Estelle said that that was the way to make the least 
draught, and it only needed four moves in all. 
English people threw the door wide open and came 
in with all their arms and legs at once. They did 
not wipe their noses in the correct manner either. 
The correct way was to grasp the whole nose with 
the handkerchief and turn the face away ; but 
English people grasped the end which came first, and 
went on talking just as usual. She said they did not 
use their soup spoons properly either, and that they 
were never taught to eat apple tart off the end of 
their knives as Germans were. I thought I had 
never heard a nun grumble so much. 

When she had finished, she told me that if ever I 
came out of my cubicle at night when once the 
lights were out I should be expelled next morning. 
Then she said that in a short time the girls would 
begin to arrive and that at five o'clock they would 
assemble in the big hall and I could meet them 
there. She asked me if I should like to go and pray 
in the chapel, but I said, " No, thank you " (I could 
not have prayed at four o'clock in the afternoon), and 
she puckered up her forehead and said that, in that 
case, I must take a book and go and sit in the prepara- 



184 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD 

tion classroom, and she gave me a book about the 
lives of the saints and took me to the preparation 
room. It was a broad gallery that ran right round 
the top of a big hall with a polished floor. There 
were rows of desks in threes in the gallery, and you 
could look down over the balustrade into the hall 
beneath. 

I sat down at one of the desks and felt utterly lost 
and lonely. At first I looked at the pictures of the 
saints in the book, but I didn't like them. They 
were too stout and foreign looking, and they had 
smooth faces and curled flowing hair. In our books 
in England the saints had looked hungry and pensive, 
as they should, seeing how much they had to mortify 
the flesh. I soon got tired of the book and shut it 
up and put my arms on the desk and laid my head 
upon them feeling very sorrowful. Then suddenly 
I heard a door open in the hall below and footsteps 
and voices, and when I looked over the balustrade I 
saw a number of girls in black dresses trooping into 
the hall, and I knew it must be five o'clock. I got 
up and went out of the gallery and down the stairs. 
When I reached the bottom I walked along a 
passage in the direction of the voices until I reached 
the door of the big hall. There were crowds of 
girls in black dresses coming down another staircase 
that led from the dormitories. Most of them had 



I GO TO GERMANY 1 85 

their arms round one another's necks or waists, and 
sometimes they stopped and rubbed their cheeks 
together and kissed, and looked into one another's 
eyes, and then went on again. 

They were all dressed exactly as I was, and all had 
their hair in plaits, some hanging down behind and 
some twisted round their heads. Most of them had 
fair hair and blue eyes, but some had black hair and 
eyes and brown faces, and a few had red hair and 
freckles. Some were tall and broad with big hands 
and feet, but most were small and plump and pink, 
with curly mouths and chins and bright eyes. They 
were talking and laughing all together and looking 
about for their friends, and waving their hands to 
others in the distance and calling out, " Tag, Lise ! " 
or " Tag, Gretchen," and when two friends met they 
kissed one another on each cheek and began talking 
both at once, and then they walked away together 
with their arms round one another's necks. 

I slipped into the hall and sat down on a chair near 
the door. There were chairs all round the walls 
and some other girls were sitting alone on them. 
They were new girls too, but there weren't any 
other English girls. 

Sometimes a group of girls came up to the new 
ones and stood round them and asked questions. 
They came up to me and asked questions too. 



1 86 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD 

They said, " Wie heisst du ? " (" What is your 
name ? "). And, " Woher bist du ? " (" Where do 
you come from ? "). And, " Wass ist dein Vater ? ,: 
(" What is your father ? "). And, " Bist du reich ? " 
(" Are you rich ? "). And one said, " Bist du adel ? " 
(" Have you a title ? "). 

I was getting used to being asked questions since 
I had come to Germany. In England we were told 
not to ask them. When I said I came from London 
they said, " Gott ! Ein grosse Stadt ! (" God ! A 
big town ! "), and asked if I was English. And when 
I said yes, they called out to others, " Here's an 
English girl ! " 

And then others came up and they all stood round 
and stared at me without speaking. I stood in the 
middle and folded my arms behind my back and 
curled one leg round the other and stood on one foot. 
I always felt as though I had locked myself up safely 
somewhere when I stood like that. When they had 
finished staring they went away again. At seven 
o'clock a bell rang and we went to a long refectory 
to have supper off ham rolls and milk and water, and 
at nine o'clock we went to bed. 

Next morning, after mass, we all went out into 
the playground. Some girls walked up and down 
in twos and threes with their arms round one another's 
waists as they had done in the big hall the night 



I GO TO GERMANY 1 87 

before, and some sat on benches and did needlework. 
Many were crying. They didn't cry to themselves 
secretly as most people do, but quite loudly, " Ooh- 
ooh ! Ooh-ooh ! " and their friends tried to comfort 
them. As soon as a girl put her handkerchief to her 
eyes other girls ran up and crowded round her and 
helped. Sometimes they held smelling-salts up to 
her nose, and they kept saying, " Gott ! Armes 
Ding ! Hat Heimweh ! " (" God ! Poor thing ! 
She's homesick ! "). 

Soon girls were bursting into tears all over the 
playground, and their friends ran up to them. It 
reminded me of the people being taken ill on the 
steamer and the steward hurrying to take care of 
them with the basin. One stout girl in a very short 
skirt with a sandy pigtail and a big flabby face was 
so noisy that she soon attracted everybody's attention 
and got the biggest crowd round her. 

She kept screaming, " Mama ! Mama ! Ich 
sterbe ! Ich sterbe ! " (" Mama ! Mama ! I die ! 
I die ! "). 

And she made her arms stiff and fell backwards on 
top of the others so that they had to hold her up. 
Whenever she felt a little better she smiled and 
kissed them all round, and pulled a big tin of sweets 
out of her pocket and offered them to everybody and 
ate some herself ; and when she had had enough 



1 88 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD 

she put the lid on the tin and the tin back in her 
pocket and began to cry again. Soon most of the 
girls were in tears and there were scarcely any left to 
comfort them. 

I was very much surprised. I had never seen so 
many people crying all at once before. I was 
inclined to cry myself, but I didn't because I didn't 
want to be comforted by strangers, and I had not 
made friends with any of them yet. 

Next day we were put into " trios." That meant 
that the same three girls were made to walk about 
together or sit together during recreation for a whole 
week, and not allowed to walk or sit with any other 
girls. If a nun met a girl standing or sitting alone 
in the playground she would say, " Where is your 
trio ? " 

And then the girl had to go and find the other two. 
They hated being in " trios," because they always 
wanted to talk to their " best friends," instead of the 
girls they were in " trio " with. Sometimes they 
used to escape from their " trios " and meet their 
" best friends " in corners, but in a moment a nun 
would surely come up behind and say, " Where are 
your ' trios ' ? " And they had to go back to them. 

They used to make secret appointments to have a 
little talk with their " best friends " in all sorts of 
odd places, behind doors, in passages, even in the 



I GO TO GERMANY 1 89 

lavatories ; but it was no good. They were always 
found out and separated. 

Sometimes a nun would call one of the girls and 
ask what they had been talking about in her " trio " 
that day, and later she would call another and ask 
her the same question in order to see whether the 
first one had told the truth. 

From time to time the girls were sent for to talk 
with the priest in his room. He lived in the convent 
and was a very nice man, with long legs and untidy 
skirts always flapping round them. He had a big 
hooked nose and kind brown eyes, and his face 
always looked bright and pleased. He stooped down 
and looked right into a person's face when he was 
talking to them. His voice was so high and squeaky 
that it could be heard coming from a long way off, 
and one could often hear him talking without seeing 
him at all. 

He used to walk across the playground to say mass 
in the chapel with his eyes turned up to heaven, his 
hands folded in his sleeves, his draggled-looking 
skirts flapping, and the deacon, who was also his 
manservant, following behind ringing a bell. The 
girls in the playground always got up and curtseyed 
and made the sign of the cross when he went by, but 
his eyes were turned up so far that he didn't see 
them ; but at other times when he came into the 



190 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD 

playground he was very kind and lively, and he knew 
no end of little jokes and riddles to make us laugh. 

When I went into his room I found him looking 
at something in a note-book. I think it was the list 
of " trios " I had been in during the month. He 
told me to sit down and began to ask me questions 
about the girls I had been in " trio " with : how I 
liked them, what I had talked about with them, what 
they thought about different things, and what I had 
heard the others talk about together. I could not 
answer all the questions, because I had not taken 
much notice of what the others did or said ; I didn't 
know I was supposed to. But he said, never mind, 
I should do better next time. 

Then he said he would like to talk English with 
me, because the English was a noble and interesting 
language which he had always wished to master. He 
said he knew much English literature and had an 
English newspaper sent to him every week, because 
he was so much interested in England. He had 
always wished to visit England, but he had never 
been able to because he had an invalid brother with 
whom he spent all his free time, and he could never 
make up his mind to go so far from him. Every 
summer he meant to spend his holiday in England, 
but when the time came he had not the heart to go. 

He asked me the names of many things in English, 



I GO TO GERMANY 191 

and when I told him he said, " Gott ! Ein in- 
teressante Sprache " (" an interesting language "), and 
wrote it down in his note-book. When his English 
newspaper came he used to give me the advertise- 
ment sheets, and I kept them in my desk, and when 
I felt homesick I slipped my hand into the desk and 
touched the paper and remembered that it had come 
from England and felt comforted. 

The other girls were very sentimental. They were 
always sending long, loving letters home to their 
fathers and mothers and friends, filled with kisses 
and little flowers and leaves and locks of hair. They 
kissed the envelopes when they had addressed them 
and said, " Darling mamachen," or " Darling 
papachen," or " darling brother," or " darling little 
sister." 

They had numbers of keepsakes and stacks of 
photographs in their desks of fathers and mothers 
and grandfathers and grandmothers and aunts and 
uncles, and they were always taking them out and 
kissing each one separately. Many were the por- 
traits of officers their relations. They used to hand 
them about to the other girls under their desks 
during preparation and admire each other's officers. 
They said, "How bold I" " How fierce ! " "How 
God-like ! " " What passionate eyes ! " " What a 
fascinating nose ! " " What divine moustaches ! " 



192 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD 

Each girl told stories about her own officers to show 
how brave they were. The girl next to me said that 
her brother, who was a lieutenant, had hit his orderly 
in the mouth and knocked some of his teeth out, and 
that in the evening when they were at dinner the 
orderly had tried to kill him by breaking a champagne 
bottle on his head. But the lieutenant had not been 
frightened. He just jumped up, pulled out his 
revolver and shot the orderly. Another girl said 
that her father, who was a general, said that why the 
English army was so bad was because the officers 
had no power to punish their men. But I said that 
English soldiers were so noble-minded that they 
never needed punishing, and that all they thought 
about was avoiding going to places where they might 
be led into temptation. That sounded like boasting, 
but I should not have said it if they had not spoken 
first. 

Many of the girls had the photographs of their 
houses, and they showed these too (some were great 
houses in parks), and said how many rooms they had, 
and what the furniture had cost, and how many 
sheets and tablecloths their mothers had ; how many 
guests came to their parties, how much money they 
would be given when they married, and how 
rich their " brautigams " (future husbands) would 
be. Some of the elder girls knew their " brau- 



I GO TO GERMANY 1 93 

tigams " already, and the others pretended they did, 
and told one another secrets about them. All the 
girls adored babies and flowers and birds, and ate 
pounds of chocolate. They said everything they 
liked was " divine " or "too sweet." Each girl 
" schwarmed " for somebody (" schwarming" is some- 
thing like being in love, but not so serious). Some 
girls schwarmed for each other, some schwarmed 
for one of the nuns, some for the doctor. Many 
schwarmed for the priest, and one or two for the 
deacon. One even schwarmed for the gardener, 
though he was very stiff and gouty and had a pimply 
face. She said a gardener's calling was one of the 
most poetical. One girl schwarmed so much for 
another girl that she scraped her initials on her arm 
with some scissors and filled the scratches with ink 
to make it look like tattoo. And when she had done 
so she was afraid she might get blood-poisoning and 
fainted through fright, and the nuns sent her to the 
infirmary. One drew a picture of the priest saying 
mass and kept it in her desk, and whenever she 
needed a book out of her desk she put her head into 
it and looked at the picture, and sometimes she cried 
over it and said, " Gott ! Wie sieht er fromm und 
heilig aus ! " (" God ! How pious and holy he 
looks ! "). 

One of the nuns found the picture, but she did not 



194 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD 

know what it was meant to be. She thought it was 
a kind of paper puzzle and that when the girl put her 
head inside the desk she was trying to solve it with a 
pencil. It was thrown into the waste-paper basket. 

The girl who schwarmed for the gardener did not 
draw a picture of him (she had not a talent for 
drawing as the first girl had), but she kept a book 
about flowers and vegetables in her desk, and said 
that when she grew up she would be a vegetarian 
and eat as little meat as possible. She said that 
though he was a gardener he might have a most 
romantic nature, and very likely spent his spare time 
in writing passionate love poems ; but dared not 
say whom he loved for fear of losing his situation. 

One holiday I saw a tall stout girl looking through 
a window at the girl she schwarmed for and wiping 
the tears from her eyes, and when I asked her what 
the matter was, she began to cry outright, and said, 
"It is too sweet. My schwarm is wearing a lace 
petticoat ! " 

The girl she schwarmed for was pulling up her 
stocking in the playground so that her lace petticoat 
was showing, and it made her cry because she thought 
it so touching. 

I was glad when holidays came, because then we 
went for a walk in the woods outside the convent 
grounds. The priest walked first of all with his 



I GO TO GERMANY 195 

English newspaper, and he would take me out of my 
" trio " to walk with him and explain to him the words 
he didn't understand. All the time he kept saying, 
" Das ist aber interessant I" (" That is interesting ! "). 

And he kept writing in his note-book and under- 
lining things. Once he began to talk about England. 
He said that in England there seemed so little super- 
vision and yet the people kept the laws. He said, 
" Bei uns ging das nicht " (" With us it would not 
do "). 

And he began to think about it and pushed his 
hat on to the back of his head and walked faster, 
forgetting that he was pulling me along with him. 

Some of the girls did not like England and used 
to talk against it. They said that English ladies 
could not cook and that was why gentlemen would 
not marry them and there were so many old maids 
in England ; and that English people only washed 
their dishes in one water instead of three as Germans 
did ; and that they did not keep their coffee-pots 
properly clean, or their clothes properly brushed, or 
their houses properly dusted. They said that every 
German girl went to a house-keeping class to learn 
how to keep house and clean and cook. 

I said that cooking was not important, but they 
said that it was and that once a prince had gone to 
dinner with a general and asked who made the soup, 



196 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD 

and when he heard it was the general's daughter who 
had made it he insisted on marrying her, although 
she was ugly and had no money. 

Except on holidays we scarcely moved at all. At 
recreation, when it was fine, the girls sat round the 
playground on benches and did crochet work, and 
when it was wet they walked round the big hall in 
" trios " and sang, " Deutschland, Deutschland 
liber alles." 

I could not get used to it. I felt I wanted to run 
about and play at something. We had been for- 
bidden to sit still in the English convent. When I 
said that we had played cricket in England the girls 
were surprised and shocked. They said that if 
young girls ran about and became as rough and 
noisy as boys no gentlemen would want to marry 
them. 

But I didn't care about gentlemen wanting to 
marry people. Sitting still so long made me feel 
ill. I used to turn giddy and I lost my appetite. 
We had pork for dinner nearly every day and salt 
fish on Fridays. The smell of food made me feel 
ill. I often had nightmares and I think the other 
girls had them too, but they said that they had 
visions. They took their " best friends " into 
corners in the morning and told them about it. 
They said their favourite saints appeared to them 



I GO TO GERMANY 1 97 

and made them all sorts of promises. One morning 
before mass the girl who slept in the cubicle next 
mine (the girl who had cried so loudly in the play- 
ground) called a lot of other girls round her and 
began telling them about a vision she had had in the 
night. She said that the Blessed Virgin had come 
into her cubicle with a pale light all round her and 
had told her of delightful things that would happen 
to her. One girl asked if the Blessed Virgin had 
said anything about a " brautigam," and she began 
kissing the others all round and said she had, but 
that she had told her not to tell the other girls what 
she had said in case they should be envious. She 
said that for nothing in the world would she repeat 
what the Blessed Virgin had said about the " brauti- 
gam," but that he would be very rich and of noble 
family. 

That same afternoon I was very feverish and my 
head ached terribly. The girls were very kind to 
me. They all wanted to kiss me and they did 
everything they could think of to comfort me, until 
at last a nun came up and said that I must go to the 
" kranken-haus " (infirmary). 

The infirmary was a little house built in a corner 
of the convent grounds. It had a lot of nice bright 
rooms in it with beds. There were three girls in 
bed in the room I was taken to. The doctor was 



198 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD 

going in just in front of me. The girls were talking 
and laughing very cheerfully as we went in, but as 
soon as they saw the doctor they stopped and began 
to tell him what kind of pains they had. The first 
girl said, " Oh, God ! Mr. Doctor, I have such 
agony in my stomach." 

She had on a little lace cap, and her two yellow 
plaits were so long they reached half-way down the 
bed on each side of her. She looked like one of the 
big baby dolls they sell in the Christmas toy bazaars. 
She screwed up her face to show the doctor how bad 
the pain was. 

The second girl had a big brown face and a 
straight nose and white, even teeth. She had pains 
in her inside too. She kept saying, " Dear Saviour ! 
My stomach hurts so dreadfully." 

The doctor said the first girl was to have a com- 
press put on her, and then the third girl began to 
say, " May I not have a compress too, dear Mr. 
Doctor ? I die of pain." 

And then they all began to talk at once and ask if 
they might have the different things they wanted. 

The doctor said, " My dear young ladies, have 
patience." 

And he drew me up to him and sat down and 
said, " Well, my child, have you pains in your 
inside too ? " 



I GO TO GERMANY 1 99 

The nun who had brought me told him what was 
the matter with me, and he began to ask me about 
the school in London, and the food we had to eat ; 
and he said to the nun it was plain that German 
school-life did not agree with me. I was having too 
much white meat and not enough exercise. He said, 
" This won't do. The child must go back to 
England." 

Then he said I was to go to bed and take a powder, 
and that he would speak to Reverend Mother about 
me. 

Then he got near the door and said that the other 
girls were to have nothing more to eat that day and 
were each to have a big dose of castor oil in the 
morning. 

They began throwing themselves about and 
crying out, " Ach, weh ! Ach nein, Herr Doktor ! " 
(" Oh, woe ! Oh, no, Mr. Doctor ! "). 

They reminded me of the fallen angels tossing 
upon the lake of fire in " Paradise Lost." 

But the doctor slipped through the door and got 
away. 

A few days later Reverend Mother sent for me and 
began dancing round me and booming in her deep 
noisy voice that I was to leave the convent and to go 
back for some time to Frau G.'s house to get strong 
before returning to England. She patted me on the 



200 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD 

head with her heavy, wooden fingers, and said that 
she would be very sorry to lose me, and that every- 
body in the convent would be very sorry. I curtsied 
and said, " Thank you, Reverend Mother." 

The priest shook hands with me a great many 
times and said that one day he would come to see me 
in England, and I should take him to see the Houses 
of Parliament, and I said I would. 

The girls were very sorry I was going. They kept 
on kissing me all day long, and they gave me hundreds 
of little keepsakes, and I gave them everything I could 
think of in return. Even Mother Estelle was sorry 
(although I was English) ; I had tried to be tidy and 
polite so as not to worry her. 



CHAPTER V 

I FIND SOMETHING TO BELIEVE IN 

WHEN I got back from Germany I found that 
I was going to live with my mother again.* 
I was very glad. My two brothers had grown up 
and gone away and we lived by ourselves in a house 
that was small but very pretty. It was filled with 
pictures as my uncle's house had been, but it was 
small and had not many stairs. In most of the 
rooms there was graceful-looking shining furniture 
called Chippendale, and there were pretty carpets 
on the floors and gay papers on the walls and flowers 
on the tables. My mother made any room pretty 
she went into, and my grandfather once said that if 
a room were to have nothing in it but a few packing- 
cases and some rags " Cathy " would make it look 
charming in a moment. She always chose books 
with the brightest and prettiest covers to put in 
front of the shelves in the bookcases and put the 
ugly ones behind, even if they were learned. She 
said it was quite easy to get them out if you wanted 

* Mrs. Catherine Hueffer, widow of Dr. Francis Hueffer. 



202 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD 

to, and the bookcases glowed and gleamed like great 
big jewels. 

My mother was very pretty. She had fair hair 
and an absolutely straight nose, and a nicely shaped 
mouth with beautiful even white teeth, and her eyes 
were a bright clear blue. When I came home from 
Germany she looked sad and wore a black dress. If 
any one began to tell her something that sounded 
like bad news her eyes would grow frightened in an 
instant, and her face would look strained and anxious 
until she found out that nothing really serious was 
the matter. That was because so many people she 
loved had died within the past few years : my father, 
and my grandfather, who was her father, and my 
grandmother, who was her mother, and my aunt, who 
was her half-sister; and she always seemed to be 
afraid that other people were going to die. She had 
loved her father and mother better than anything in 
the world. When she spoke of my grandmother the 
tears always came into her eyes, and when my 
grandfather was mentioned she sighed and said, 
" Ah, dear ! Poor papa ! " When people told her 
of misfortunes that had happened to themselves or 
others her face looked sorrowful and her mouth grew 
lined with pain, even if she didn't know them. 
But when she heard of other people's good fortune 
she looked just as proud and joyful as if it had 




Mrs. Catherine Hueffer 

(Cathy Madox-Brown) 

By For J MaJox-Brown 



I FIND SOMETHING TO BELIEVE IN 203 

happened to herself. She would go off at once to 
any distance to help a person, no matter who it might 
be, even if she did not like them very much. She 
would sit up night after night to nurse a friend, or a 
servant, or anybody who was ill, and never complain 
and say she was tired next day. If people came into 
the room when she was sitting in a comfortable chair 
she would get up at once and make them take the 
best chairs and she herself would take the worst and 
say, " I always like a hard chair. It's better for my 
back." And if she had fruit or sweets or anything 
nice to eat she would give it all to the first person she 
met and say, " You take it. It really isn't good for 
me. I'm only eating it because I don't want it to 
be wasted." She was always ready to give up 
anything she had to any one who wanted it. But if 
she saw a big boy beating a little boy she would 
rush out to stop him. If she heard of a strong 
person ill-treating a weak one her face would grow 
red and her eyes would shine and she would be nearly 
as furious as my grandfather used to be, and she'd 
say, " I hate injustice." If she had ever met a 
tyrant tyrannising she would most certainly have 
attacked him. She was rather timid on her own 
account, and afraid of things like mad dogs or drains 
or men who looked rough or as if they had bad 
characters. But if she was protecting some one 



204 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD 

weaker than herself she was afraid of nothing. She 
didn't much like being contradicted because, she 
said, " I never insist upon anything unless I'm 
positively certain." And when people proved to her 
that she was wrong she would look exceedingly 
surprised and say, " It's most extraordinary ! " 

When she was a girl she had painted some very 
beautiful pictures which had been admired by 
famous artists, and placed in exhibitions, and nearly 
always sold. But she couldn't give much time to 
painting because there was always some one ill or 
in trouble, or who wanted taking care of. At first 
she took care of her father and mother and her 
brother Oliver, who was said to be a genius. When 
she was married she took care of my father and her 
children and her house and servants and a lot of 
other people besides, and then she gave up painting 
altogether. Sometimes when she was telling me 
about it her face would look wistful and she'd sigh 
and say, " It did seem a pity ! " But then she'd 
correct herself immediately afterwards and say she 
thought perhaps she had been happier taking care of 
other people than painting pictures. 

When I got back to England I was growing a big 
girl. I kept my hair in a pigtail as I had worn it in 
Germany and had all my dresses let down. But I 
had not got my religion back. The discipline had 



I FIND SOMETHING TO BELIEVE IN 205 

made me tidy, but it did not give me faith. When 
I had thought it over I knew that why I had found 
it so difficult to believe in religious things was because 
I'd only been told to do so by other people, who had 
also been told to do it by other people, and so on. 
They'd none of them had any proof or anything to 
show for it. And the people who had taught me 
did not look particularly clever. They said that 
what they taught had been revealed by God. But 
other people said God had revealed just the opposite 
and that the first people believed wrong and would 
be punished for it. Mr. Hall, the most pious of the 
cabmen in the mews near my grandfather's house, 
would have said that the Pope and the saints and 
the priests and the nuns were thorough bad lots, and 
they would have said that he was doomed. And 
they would both have said that the Jews and Turks 
and other heathens " stank in the face of God " 
(that was a sentence in one of Mr. Hall's sermons). 
And the Jews and Turks and other heathens would 
have scorned them back and said they were unclean 
and didn't have their food cooked in the proper way. 
It's very puzzling, and it makes it very awkward for 
the Lord, because they are all certain that He is on 
their side and expect Him to punish the other 
people. I asked my mother what she thought about 
it, and she sighed and said, " It was quite true, and 



206 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD 

the same in everything, not only religion." She said, 
" If only people wouldn't disagree so much ! It 
would make it better for everybody." 

But having nothing at all to believe in somehow 
used to worry me. Before I went to the convent, 
when I had been an anarchist, I had believed in 
punishing tyrants and getting up a bloody revolution 
to make everybody happy. Believing in nothing at 
all is like walking up a long staircase with no bannisters 
to hold on to. 

One day a grown-up young lady came to see me. 
She was the elder sister of one of the Protestant 
girls in the English convent. She was very tall and 
slim and she stooped rather, and she was very 
fashionably dressed. She had a long light brown 
face, not quite straight, and large black eyes that 
protruded slightly. They did not look very kind or 
clever but empty and bright, and as if they did not 
see very far. Two of her teeth stuck out just a little 
in the front, but not enough to be really ugly. She 
had a moist-looking mouth that smiled rather often, 
smiles of different sizes. Some were quite tiny 
smiles, some were a little bigger, and when they were 
biggest you saw her teeth quite plainly. She sat in 
an armchair opposite to me and talked and her arms 
and legs looked very long and tired. 

She said that since she had been grown up she 



I FIND SOMETHING TO BELIEVE IN 207 

had been going into society, but that now she had 
left off going there. She said that people in society 
were frail and unprincipled and did disgraceful 
things. Some of the things they did were to bleach 
their finger-nails, and have their faces skinned at 
great expense to make themselves young and beauti- 
ful, and sit in dark rooms waiting for the agony to 
pass. And afterwards, if they were not as young and 
beautiful as they thought they ought to be, they 
refused to pay the bill and went to law. She told 
me a lot of other things they did, but I have not got 
room to put them all down here. She said that all 
the people in society hated and despised one another 
for not having something they ought to have or for 
not doing something in the way they ought to do it 
(just like religious people), and that all they thought 
about was rushing from place to place in search of 
feverish amusement, ruining one another's reputa- 
tions and taking care that other people should not 
find out how bad they were themselves. She said 
that she had written an article about it exposing 
them, but it had not been published. Then she 
took a very big pair of spectacles with deep black 
rims out of her pocket and put them on. Her fingers 
looked very thin while she was doing it and the 
glasses made her eyes swell out and look like dark 
muddy pools. Then she smiled a small smile and 



208 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD 

said that when she first went into society people 
had told her that if she put on nice clothes and stood 
about for long enough in a sufficient quantity of 
drawing-rooms some gentlemen would in the end 
be certain to want to marry her ; but that she had 
stood about in a great many drawing-rooms for a long 
time, and although several gentlemen had looked 
from a distance as though they would like to marry 
her, when they had come nearer and been introduced 
they hadn't wanted to any longer. Then she smiled 
a medium-sized smile and said that she was not 
sorry the gentlemen had not wanted to marry her, 
because since she had left off going into society she 
had been studying and thinking deeply, and had 
little by little been drawing nearer to perfect truth. 
I was very interested. It sounded just what I was 
looking for, and I asked her to explain it to me. She 
said that it was difficult to explain to any one who 
had never studied it, but that, combined with perfect 
beauty, it was in everything around us if only we 
had the perception to perceive it. If we put our- 
selves into a proper frame of mind and sought it 
earnestly we could not fail to find it. Sometimes it 
gradually became apparent, and sometimes it was 
suddenly apprehended in an illuminating flash of 
light. It was really the same thing as the Immense 
Reality. I asked her who had found out about it, 



I FIND SOMETHING TO BELIEVE IN 200, 

and she said that it had been revealed by the Master 
Mind which was the same thing as the Omnipotent 
Reasoner, or the Supreme Will. She said that she 
had written an article about that too, but that it had 
not been published. 

I said it sounded very difficult to understand and 
that I should like to have it properly explained. 
She said that she could take me to some places where 
very wise and learned people were giving explana- 
tions. Some did it for five shillings, some for half-a- 
crown, and some for less. Some charged a great 
deal, as much as a guinea, and they were the cleverest 
and wisest of them all. 

On the following Sunday we went to a small house 
in a fashionable quarter. We went up the steps 
into the passage, and a long, thin lady in a tight black 
dress, with a tiny head and light eyes and no chin, 
with shining black cherries in her hat, who was 
selling literature stopped me in the entrance. She 
seemed to think I was too young to go in and asked 
me if I had ever seen anybody under control. I said, 
" Oh, yes; often." I thought to myself that all 
the girls at school had been under control, and 
servants, and everybody else who had to do as they 
were told. She did not mean that, but I thought 
she did. Then the grown-up young lady paid her 
five shillings for each of us and she let us pass. 



210 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD 

We went into a room on the right-hand side of the 
passage. It looked out on to a garden. At the top 
of the room there was a platform with a desk upon 
it, and there were rows of chairs across the middle 
of the room. The window and the walls had purple 
hangings. A middle-sized lady was sitting at the 
desk on the platform. She had dark yellow hair and 
pale greeny-grey eyes that moved about very quickly 
and sandy eyebrows. Her face was heavy and sallow 
and looked business-like, but not healthy. She was 
a spiritualist lady. She was counting up little heaps 
of pennies that were standing in a row on the ledge 
of the desk and putting them into a silk bag with 
strings. There were a lot of other ladies sitting on 
the chairs. They all looked expensively dressed. 
They wore fur coats and fashionable hats, and most 
of them had pink trustful faces and wide-open eyes. 
Many of them had on pearl necklaces and you could 
see the little clasps of them just inside the collars of 
their coats when they pushed them back. The lady 
at the desk was so busy counting up the pennies that 
she took no notice at all of them, but they were all 
staring hard at her as though they thought that what 
she was doing was very important. When she had 
finished counting the pennies she tied up the bag 
and rang a little bell and said that now the sitting 
would begin. Then she got off the platform and 



I FIND SOMETHING TO BELIEVE IN 211 

went to a chest on the left-hand side of the room and 
took out a white robe like a nightgown, and put it 
on and tied it in round the waist with a string, and 
the other ladies stared hard at her all the time. 
Their eyes seemed to roll round after her all together 
as if they were only one pair. The spiritualist lady 
went back to the platform and said she would give 
her usual Sunday morning address, and that after- 
wards she hoped to go " under control " for a little 
while, and then perhaps there would be some 
interesting messages from our spirit friends. She 
had rather a sharp, grating voice, not at all pleasant 
or friendly. She passed her hand across her fore- 
head and wore a dreamy, far-away look, and said 
that she could feel the presence of many spirit friends 
that morning, waiting to give us messages of hope 
and comfort. She was just going to begin the 
address when she remembered that she had not 
locked up the bag with the pennies in it, and she 
pulled up the white robe and took a key out of the 
pocket in her skirt underneath and locked the desk 
and put the key back into her pocket. Then she 
passed the back of her hand over her forehead again 
and began the address. 

She said that while we were in the material world 
what we must be most careful to do was to keep our 
bodies in good condition for the sake of any of our 



212 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD 

spirit friends who might wish to use them for 
demonstrating their presence to their dear ones who 
were still on this side of the veil. We must take 
care always to keep ourselves well fed on good and 
nourishing food and to spend time on the considera- 
tion of our clothes, because when we were well fed 
and dressed our minds possessed a certain peace and 
satisfaction which they couldn't possess if we were 
badly dressed and under-nourished, and that that 
feeling of bodily satisfaction was essential to our 
spiritual welfare. The ladies in the audience looked 
at one another and nodded their heads as if they 
thought that what she was saying was quite true. 
Then she said what a terrible disappointment it 
would be to any spirit revisiting this earth with the 
best and most affectionate intentions to find itself 
lodged in a body that was worried and nerve-racked 
through want of proper food and clothing. Such a 
state of things would not be fair either to ourselves 
or to our dear ones that had passed, and we must 
take great care to avoid it, otherwise we could not 
hope to do our duty to ourselves or to our friends 
either on this side or the other. She said some other 
things as well, but that was the longest part, and the 
part which the ladies liked best and which was 
easiest to understand. 

Then she began to pass the backs of her hands 



I FIND SOMETHING TO BELIEVE IN 21 3 

over her forehead again and look wild and worried 
and she said she could feel the approach of spirit 
control. She said that as the control always took so 
much out of her she was obliged to have two pro- 
fessional ladies present to massage her when she felt 
that she was getting overcome. Then two ladies 
came up and sat in two chairs just below the platform 
facing the audience. They were the professional 
ladies. They looked severe and took off their 
gloves and rolled back their sleeves, and the ladies 
in the audience glanced at one another again and 
nodded and raised their eyebrows. 

Then the spiritualist lady rubbed her forehead 
again and said that she would like some music to 
obtain the most favourable possible atmospheric 
condition, and a plump rosy lady sitting at the end 
of the row in which I was with a hurdy-gurdy on a 
table in front of her began to turn the handle to 
grind a tune. She was dressed in black, but a filmy 
fashionable sort of black, and she had little diamond 
ear-rings in her ears. She was pinker and plumper 
than anybody else and looked soft and good to eat, 
like a nice cream pudding. She was staring so hard 
at the spiritualist lady that her eyes looked as if they 
would start out of her head, and her mouth was a 
little open. Then the spiritualist lady got down 
from the platform with her eyes shut and her arms 



214 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD 

spread out and began to sway about the room and 
bump against the furniture. The grown-up young 
lady whispered to me that this was a most solemn 
moment and that she was in a trance and under the 
control of spirits. 

Some of the spirits were English, and some were 
Irish, and some were Scotch, and some were of other 
nations, and whichever spirit it was controlling her 
made her speak with its own particular accent. 
They all seemed to be in great trouble, or as if they 
couldn't stand the climate, and she began to groan 
and scream most sadly. 

She said, " Oh, it's so da-a-a-rk ! I can't se-e-e ! " 
And, " Oh ! it's co-o-o-ld ! I'm tre-e-e-e-mbling ! ' : 
and then she stood still for a moment for us to see 
her trembling. Then she went on wriggling again 
and throwing her arms about and turning round on 
her heels and doing a great many other very peculiar 
things. 

When the spirits found out that it was no use 
complaining and that they would have to make the 
best of things, they began to settle down a little and 
wonder where they were, and ask to have things 
properly explained. When it was a Scotch spirit it 
said, " Where am I ? Oh ! A dinna ken ! A dinna 
ken ! " When it was Irish it said, " Och ! begorra, 
phwere the diwil am I got to ? Phwill ye tell me, 



I FIND SOMETHING TO BELIEVE IN 21 5 

plaze ? " And when it was a French one it said, 
" Ah, I implore you, vill you 'ave ze kindness to tell 
me vere I find my selves ? " 

The ladies in the audience kept whispering 
together, and one of them, a stout elderly lady in the 
front row, kept saying to the spirits, " Don't be 
frightened. No one will hurt you. You are among 
good, kind, loving friends.' ' 

The lady with the hurdy-gurdy went on grinding 
out the proper sort of tune. When it was time for 
the spirit to change she touched a spring and ground 
a different one. When the spirit was Scotch she 
played " The Bonnets of Bonnie Dundee." When it 
was Irish she played " Kathleen Mavourneen," and 
when it was French she played the " Marseillaise" 

She still looked dreadfully frightened, as though 
she might be going to make a mistake in the music. 
She seemed to be clinging on to the hurdy-gurdy 
with fear. But she couldn't have made a mistake 
really, because she had a little programme written in 
pencil with the list of tunes she was to play spread 
out on the hurdy-gurdy in front of her, and the right 
sort of spirit always came to the music she played, 
just as though it had all been properly arranged 
beforehand. 

At last the spiritualist lady gave a loud and awful 
groan and fell back into an armchair that had been 



21 6 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD 

put ready for her to do it in between the two pro- 
fessional ladies, and they began to stroke her head 
and wipe the perspiration from her brow and rub 
her arms and hands and feet very professionally. 
She was still wriggling and groaning and they kept 
comforting her and saying, " It's all right now, dear ! 
There's nothing to fret about. You've done us all 
a great, great service, and we're very, very grateful 
to you. There ! You're better now ! " 

Then they frowned and said she really did too 
much in her anxiety to be helpful to others, but it 
took it out of her dreadfully, and her friends were 
not going to be selfish. 

Then the spiritualist lady left off groaning and 
said she was beginning to feel better, and she sat for 
some time with her face hidden in her hands, 
shivering a little and giving a sudden jerk from time 
to time, and while she was doing that the lady who 
had played the hurdy-gurdy went round with a 
plate and made a collection. 

When she had finished the spiritualist lady 
recovered and said there was still time for a few 
cases of special investigation, and would any one who 
desired spiritual help come up and sit in the front 
row. 

Only one lady besides myself and the grown-up 
young lady remained. It was getting near lunch- 



I FIND SOMETHING TO BELIEVE IN 21 7 

time and the rest seemed to melt away like magic. 
The grown-up young lady said that if it had not 
been so near a meal time a great many more would 
have required spiritual help, and she told me to 
go and sit beside the other lady in the front row 
and see what the medium would say to me. We 
sat side by side and the spiritualist lady sat in front 
of us. 

The lady next to me was very small and thin, but 
she looked as though she must be very rich. She 
had a little, anxious, pointed face, quite covered with 
tiny lines and wrinkles, and pale grey hair beauti- 
fully waved with curling-tongs, and a long black 
lace veil on her hat. Her eyes looked very sad and 
wistful. 

She said to the medium in a little gentle voice, 
" Have you any message from my son to-day ? ,: 
And the spiritualist lady shut her eyes and passed 
her hands across them and said, " Yes ... it is 
growing clear. ... I can see distinctly. . . . Give 
me your hands.' ' 

And the lady put her tiny little hands covered with 
sparkling rings into the medium's, and I could see 
them tremble. She said, " Are you here, Ronald, 
my son ? " And the medium answered as though 
it was the lady's son speaking, " Yes, mother." 
The lady said, " Is it well with you, my dear ? " 



21 8 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD 

Her voice was trembling too. The son said, " Yes, 
mother, but I miss you very much. I wish you were 
here with me." And the lady whispered, " My 
darling boy ! " 

Her face was shining as though she could really 
see her boy and were close to him. She seemed to 
have forgotten that anybody else was there. She 
didn't speak for a few moments. She seemed to be 
looking and looking at her boy, too happy even to 
want to say anything to him. And at last she said, 
" Can you see me, Ronald ? " And the son said, 
" Yes, mother, but I cannot show myself to you yet. 
Some day I shall be able to." And she said in a very 
low voice, " Yes, yes, I know, I'm waiting . . ." 
Then after another few moments she said, " It will 
be your birthday in a few days. You will be nine- 
teen. I shall be thinking of you . . ." And the 
medium said, as though it were the son speaking, 
" Come again soon, mother. Come as often as you 
can. It's such a help to me." And she said, " Yes, 
yes, my dear, I will." 

Then the medium let go of the lady's hands and 
she dropped her veil over her face and went away 
out of the room on tiptoe, like a shadow, without 
making the slightest sound. We did not move till 
she had gone, and then the medium drew her chair 
in front of mine and took hold of my hands and shut 



I FIND SOMETHING TO BELIEVE IN 21 9 

her eyes and said, " L L Can you think of 

anybody whose name begins with L ? " I said yes, 
that we had had an undernurse called Louisa when 
I was quite a little girl, before my father died. The 
spiritualist lady looked cheerful and said, " Yes, yes, 
Louisa. That's the name I'm trying to get. I 
can see her quite plainly. She's standing close 
beside you. It is evidently your nurse, because she 
has on a white cap and apron. She is stooping down 
with her hand quite near the ground, raising it 
higher little by little. She means to say, * What a 
big girl you have grown, Miss, since I saw you last.' 
She is smiling and raising her arms to show how 
pleased and surprised she is that you have grown so 
much." 

But Louisa wasn't dead at all. She had been to 
see me only the week before, and she was coming 
the following week as well. Even if she had died 
in between she couldn't have been very much 
surprised to see how much I had grown in a 
week. But I didn't say so. I just said, " Thank 
you very much." Then she said that she had seen 
at once that I was very psychic and that I ought 
to attend the meetings regularly in order to develop 
my gifts. I said, " Thank you," again, and we came 
away. 

When we got outside the grown-up young lady 



220 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD 

asked me whether I had liked the meeting. I said 
not very much because the spiritualist lady had not 
explained any of the things I wanted to know about, 
and the spirits had not said anything really interesting. 
She was offended. She said it was because I had 
not put myself into the proper frame of mind, and 
that she herself had derived great spiritual consola- 
tion from the meeting and had greatly added to her 
store of knowledge. 

A few days later she took me to another meeting, 
but not in a fashionable quarter. It was in a big 
house in a gloomy street and it had " Bedroom to let 
for single gentleman " written on a card in the 
window on the right-hand side of the door. We 
went into the passage and paid a shilling each to 
a gentleman with crooked eyes and a husky voice 
who had some literature in a basket hung round his 
neck. 

The grown-up young lady said that the meetings 
held in this house were considered particularly good, 
and that the gentleman who conducted them was a 
celebrated medium who had been the bosom friend 
and spiritual adviser of another celebrated gentleman 
who wrote in the newspapers. I felt very interested 
and glad that I was going to see him, and we went 
into the room. 

He was a tiny man with black hair and small 



I FIND SOMETHING TO BELIEVE IN 221 

bright eyes and a yellow face and dirty finger-nails. 
He seemed to be darting about all over the room 
talking to the people. When we came in he darted 
over to us and shook hands with us and said, " 'Ow 
do you do, young ladies ? I'm very glad to see you. 
Will you come and sit near the fire or will you find 
it too 'ot ? " 

We sat on chairs near the door and waited twenty 
minutes for the meeting to begin. There were a lot 
of people sitting round the room on chairs and on a 
low wide sofa against the left-hand wall. Some 
looked rich, but some were poorly dressed and 
looked quite ordinary. There were several gentle- 
men in skimpy suits with damp hair and dull eyes 
and pasty faces, and one elderly gentleman with 
white hair and moustaches, and a red forehead and 
blue irritable-looking eyes. 

One gentleman in a skimpy suit, a young gentle- 
man, was the celebrated medium's assistant. He 
told us that at eight o'clock punctually the doors 
would be closed and the celebrated medium would 
go into a trance under the control of an Egyptian 
spirit called Jumbo, who had been mangled and 
boiled alive hundreds of years ago. He said that 
one evening the Egyptian spirit had quite un- 
expectedly given a description of the exact sensations 
he had experienced while being boiled and that 



222 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD 

the audience had considered it most striking and 
interesting. 

At eight o'clock the door was shut and the cele- 
brated medium turned down the gas and sat down 
in an armchair underneath the gas bracket. He 
closed his eyes and folded his hands and jerked first 
one shoulder and then another. That was to show 
that he was going into a trance. Then he suddenly 
began to speak in an awfully deep voice, much 
deeper than the one he had spoken to us in. It was 
really the Egyptian spirit, Jumbo, speaking. The 
Egyptian spirit said that he had often been asked by 
seekers after the truth on this side for some descrip- 
tion of the life beyond the grave, and that now he 
was going to give them in a few words some of his 
own experiences. He could safely say that the life 
beyond the grave was a 'appy life, supposing that 
our conduct on this side of the grave had been such 
as to entitle us to 'appiness on the other. He said 
that some spirit friends were discontented for a bit 
and found that that life was not all they could wish 
that life to be. Some spirit friends was actually 
violent when they first come across and even used 
bad language, but they was soon brought to reason 
by other spirit friends what knew the truth and 
taught that the path of love was the path to 'appiness, 
and then they settled down. He said that some 



I FIND SOMETHING TO BELIEVE IN 223 

friends on this side was anxious to 'ave a glimpse of 
everyday life on the other side, and wanted to know 
whether there was streets and 'ouses on the other 
side like there was on this. He was there to tell 
them that there was, and that walking down the 
street on the other side was very similar to walking 
down the street on this. There was 'ouses along 
both sides of the streets with windows in them, 
though it was a curious fact that many of the 'ouses 
'ad no doors. There was 'angings in the windows 
just as there was in the windows on this side, and 
there was 'angings on the walls as well. But the 
difference was that you could pass your 'and right 
through the 'angings on the other side and feel 
nothing and make no impression on them at all. 
He said that was a strange and interesting fact that 
had repeatedly been taken notice of. 

When he had got as far as this there was a knock 
at the street door and the assistant jumped up and 
said below his breath, " Room full ! " and went 
towards the door of the room. But the celebrated 
medium suddenly said in his own voice, though he 
didn't have to come out of the trance to do it: 
" There's room for one on the sofa." 

And so there was. And the assistant went out 
and opened the street door and came in again 
followed by a very tall stout lady shabbily dressed 



224 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD 

in black. She had a broad round face and bright 
blue eyes and a big friendly smile. She walked 
across the room on tiptoe with long steps so as not 
to disturb the other people, and kept saying, " Very 
sorry, I'm sure," and she sat down heavily on the 
end of the sofa which gave an awful creak, and the 
other people on it had to huddle close together 
because she took up much more room than any 
ordinary person. 

The celebrated medium was still in a trance 
waiting to go on with the address, but she didn't 
know he was, and she kept nodding to people in a 
very friendly way and saying, " Good evening to 
you," and then she began to explain how it was that 
she had come so late. She said she had got off the 
very minute she had finished washing up the supper 
things, but that she had had to keep waiting about 
for 'busses, which does keep anybody back so. 

When the celebrated medium saw that the other 
people were listening to her instead of waiting for 
Jumbo to go on with the address, he came out of the 
trance and turned up the gas. The stout lady went 
on talking, and the other people were interested. 
She said that, though they might not think it, she 
and her family were in great trouble, and that a kind 
lady had given her a shilling and paid her bus fare 
from Hammersmith, where she lived, and told her to 



I FIND SOMETHING TO BELIEVE IN 225 

come here, for she would be certain to find help. 
She said that she was the mother-in-law of a burglar, 
but that he was not really a burglar, but had been 
falsely accused. She said he was as straight and 
steady a man as ever walked the earth. Why the 
police thought he was a burglar was because they had 
caught him with a big bag full of burglar's tools one 
foggy night. What had really happened was that 
he had been for a walk with some friends who had 
bad characters and they had shoved the bag into his 
hand and took theirselves off when they see the 
coppers coming round the corner. If he had had 
the sense to drop the bag and run it never would 
have happened, it being so foggy. But he never see 
the coppers till they was close upon him. He had 
since written heart-breaking letters on blue paper 
from the prison begging his little ones to be careful 
whom they played with in the street, because his 
own misfortune was entirely due to the keeping of 
low company. The mother-in-law said that, in this 
case, as in every other, the wife and children suffered 
most, and what to do to help her daughter and the 
little ones to get a bit of food she sometimes did not 
know. There were four of them and the twins were 
still in arms, as you might say. She had often 
thought that if she could have had a bit of a talk with 
her dear old grandfather, who had died five years 



226 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD 

ago at seventy-nine, it would have done her a world 
of good. She had lived along of him before he died 
and was the very spit of him except for being taller. 
She had never known him fail her when it was a 
matter of giving good advice. She said he was a 
fine old gentleman, and excepting for a hasty temper 
and being a trifle near, for which nobody could 
blame him, hadn't got a fault. He was that saving 
and economical that any one could scarcely credit it, 
and when once a lady had bought him a pair of 
brand new boots, instead of getting them for him on 
the instalment system at the rag-shop, as he used to 
do himself, he kept them inside the bottom of his 
bed and covered them up carefully with the sheets 
and blankets in the day time for fear any one should 
steal them from him, and went on wearing his old 
ones though his feet was on the ground. And when 
the lady came to see how he liked his new boots she 
thought at first that he had pawned them when she 
saw him wearing the old ones, but he pulled back 
the bedclothes and showed her the boots lying side 
by side, safe and comfortable, all black and shining 
like a nigger woman's twins. And the lady was so 
pleased to see them there that she promised to buy 
him a new pair when they were worn out. The 
burglar's mother-in-law said she wasn't going to sit 
there and say the old man never took a glass, because 



I FIND SOMETHING TO BELIEVE IN 227 

it wouldn't be the truth. But he never paid for one 
himself and never drank unless he was invited. 
The lady who had given her the shilling had told 
her that she could be put into touch with the 
spirit of her grandfather if she came here, and 
since she heard the words she felt she couldn't keep 
away. 

The people in the audience were all extremely 
interested, and one very old lady with thin white 
hair and a shaking head pointed to the celebrated 
medium and said, " This gentleman can help you," 
and the burglar's mother-in-law nodded and smiled 
at him and said, " I should take it very kindly, sir, 
I'm sure." 

Then the celebrated medium shut his eyes and 
jerked his shoulders one by one again and waited a 
few minutes and then said in a dreamy manner, 
1 What ? yes ... yes . . . it's growing clearer 
... no, I can't see . . . yes, I can ... I see the 
figure now quite plainly ... it is that of an aged 
man . . . with white 'air ... of somewhat stout 
build . . . with blue eyes . . . and a cheerful 
countenance . . . with a good deal of colour in 'is 
cheeks ... 'is nose is on the fleshy side, and some- 
what swollen. ..." 

The burglar's mother-in-law was nearly struck 
dumb with astonishment. She said, " If that ain't 



228 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD 

gran'pa to the life ! " And she looked all round the 
room at the other people with her eyes wide open, 
and she said, " You could knock me down with a 
feather ! I wouldn't never have believed it if I 
hadn't heard it ! It's gran'pa to the life ! " 

Then the celebrated medium said in a still dreamier 
voice, " He seems to be pointing . . . pointing 
downwards . . . towards his feet ... He is trying 
to tell me something . . . but I can't quite under- 
stand what he means." 

The burglar's mother-in-law was quite excited, 
and she said, " Well, I can tell what he means then, 
if you can't. He means them very boots I was 
a-telling you about. That's what he means, right 
enough." 

Then she looked all round the room again and 
said, " I wouldn't never have believed it if I hadn't 
heard it. Never ! " 

Then the celebrated medium said, " He seems to 
be trying to communicate to me some word that 
begins with G. . . . I can't quite get it. . . . He 
seems impatient that he is not understood im- 
mediately ..." 

And the burglar's mother-in-law said, still quite 
excited, " He would be ! That's him all over ! 
Didn't I say he was hasty-tempered ? It's gran'pa 
he's a-trying to say. That's what that is, right 



I FIND SOMETHING TO BELIEVE IN 229 

enough. Well, I never ! Who'd have thought it 
possible ? " 

I never saw any one so much astonished. 

Then the celebrated medium wriggled and 
stretched out his hands, and some one in the audience 
said to the burglar's mother-in-law, " Put your hands 
in his and perhaps you will get a message from your 
grandpapa.' ' 

And the burglar's mother-in-law tiptoed across the 
room again, full of joy and excitement, and put her 
hands in the celebrated medium's, and he said as 
though it was the burglar's mother-in-law's grand- 
father speaking, " Is it you, grand-daughter ? " 

And she said, " Yes, it is, gran'pa. It's Ellen." 
And the gran'pa said, " Thank you for coming to see 
me, grand- daughter." And she said, "I'd have 
come a jolly sight sooner, gran'pa, if I'd have known 
you was so handy. I only wish I had." And the 
gran'pa said, " I know you are in trouble, Ellen, and 
I'm very sorry to know it. And I'm very sorry for 
the wife and them poor little children." 

And the burglar's mother-in-law said, " You're 
right. Can you give me any notion, gran'pa, what 
I ought to do to help them ? She goes out working 
by the day, poor girl, but it don't bring in much. I 
mind the children while she's gone. Can you think 
of anything I could do to help them, gran'pa ? " 



230 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD 

And the grandfather said, " Yes, I can, Ellen. 
This is what youVe got to do. Remember that I 
am always near you, watching over you, and don't 
worry. When things seems to be at their worst 
they'll mend and be put right. Don't you trouble 
your 'ead about anything. It will all be for the best 
in the end. There was a meaning in it." 

And she said, " Thank you, gran'pa, I'll try to 
think so. And it will be a powerful sight of comfort 
to know you're watching over us. Can you tell me 
something more, gran'pa ? " 

And he said, " Be careful, Ellen, when you are 
taking them twins across 'Ammersmith Broadway in 
the perambulator. It's a nasty bit, that there, and 
my 'eart's often been in my mouth when I've been 
watching you. Go slow, Ellen, go slow. Put 'em 
in the pram by all means if they're too 'eavy to carry, 
but be careful 'ow you go." 

She said, " You're right, gran'pa, you are indeed. 
I'll be careful." 

And the grandfather said, " Good-bye, Ellen ; I 
must go now. Come again soon, Ellen, and don't 
forget I'm always waiting for you." 

And she said, " That I will, if I have to pop my 
wedding ring to do it." 

And she tiptoed back across the room with a 
happy face and said when she sat down, " If I didn't 



I FIND SOMETHING TO BELIEVE IN 23 1 

take them blessed twins across the Broadway in the 
pram this very morning ! I never would have 
believed it if I hadn't heard it with my own ears, 
never ! " 

And she sat down in her place again and kept 
nodding her head in a surprised way to herself as 
though she were still saying to herself that she never 
would have believed it. 

Then the celebrated medium began to describe 
other spirits that he could see standing or sitting 
about the room. Some were old, some middle-aged, 
and some quite young. One was a little baby lying 
in a lady's lap. Nobody could see them except the 
celebrated medium, but he said he could. The old 
gentleman with the irritable-looking eyes asked if 
there was an Indian among them, because he wanted 
to be put into touch with a Hindu gentleman whom 
he had known. And the celebrated medium said 
that there was an Indian standing quite close to him, 
evidently very much interested in him. He said, 
" He has some long bright-coloured feathers in his 
'air and the scars of wounds and scratches on his 
cheeks, and he is brandishing a war-like weapon like 
a tomahawk." 

The old gentleman was offended. He said his 
friend was a wise and learned Hindu, a great scholar, 
and that he would never dream of putting feathers 



Q 2 



232 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD 

in his hair and scratching his face and brandishing a 
tomahawk. The celebrated medium was a little 
offended too. He said that Indians was Indians all 
the world over and was not like us, and you could 
never tell what members of them black, uncivilised 
races might not take it into their 'eads to get up to. 
The old gentleman got quite angry and answered 
back and said that it was ridiculous to confound a 
learned Hindu with an American Red Indian. 

The meeting broke up soon after that, and the 
celebrated medium told me as we went out that he 
had seen as soon as I came into the room that I was 
extremely psychic, and that I ought to develop my 
gifts by attending the meetings regularly. 

I went to a good many other meetings, but they 
did not do me any more good than the first two had 
done. They were all alike. The mediums all gave 
the same sort of addresses and then said the spirits 
were in the room, and the audience believed they 
were because the medium said so. But no one else 
ever saw them. A good many spirits came to see me 
and gave me messages, but I couldn't understand 
them, and didn't know who the spirits were. When 
I said so the mediums were offended and said coldly, 
" I am sorry to be so unsuccessful." The grown-up 
young lady was offended too, and always said it was 
because I did not put myself into a proper frame of 



I FIND SOMETHING TO BELIEVE IN 233 

mind. I felt like a naughty girl at school, but I 
couldn't help it. I didn't know what the proper 
frame of mind was or how to get into it, but she said 
it was because I set my face against it and didn't 
want to know and understand. She said, as the nuns 
had said, that what I lacked was faith. When once 
I had faith I should find it easy to believe in and 
understand about Perfect Truth and Perfect Love and 
the Immense Realities and all the other great and 
important things I wanted to understand. If she 
and all the other people at the meetings did not have 
faith they would never be able to believe in all the 
things that happened at the meetings, but would live 
in darkness and be in the same unhappy position in 
which I was myself. She wasn't kind and sorry for 
me as the nuns had been when I didn't believe in 
going to hell, but angry and irritable. At last she 
said that she would write an article about that too, 
explaining everything, called the " Absolute Essen- 
tiality of Faith " (I think that was what she said it 
would be called), and that when it was published I 
should read it and then perhaps I should understand. 
I said, " Thank you very much." I didn't want to 
argue because she was so easily orTended. 

Some of the people told me that they had been to 
meetings where the spirits really appeared, but only 
under very favourable circumstances. They would 



234 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD 

not show themselves unless everything had been 
properly prepared. I said I should like to go to 
some of those meetings, but they said that I must 
not, because I was too young and inexperienced. 
The spirits at those meetings were sometimes a very 
mixed and shady lot, and there were some shocking 
characters among them that needed keeping in their 
places with a firm, strong hand. If you happened 
to be present when they " materialised,' ' they might 
take a fancy to you and make your life a perfect 
misery. One lady told me that a very bad spirit had 
taken a fancy to her, and that whenever she went out 
to dine it stood upon the doorstep of the house and 
kept on knocking loud double knocks at the street 
door, and when the servants opened the door there 
was no one there and they were offended and 
threatened to give notice. Since then she had never 
dined out in comfort, because even when it wasn't 
knocking she thought it was and imagined she heard 
it, and it made her nervous and spoilt the taste of 
everything she ate. She said there were some 
incorrigible practical jokers among the spirits who 
never understood when they had gone far enough. 

It all sounded very strange and funny. I couldn't 
understand why the dead should want to come to 
speak through the mouths of people like the 
spiritualist lady or the celebrated medium. They 



I FIND SOMETHING TO BELIEVE IN 235 

never seemed to choose people who looked gentle 
and well educated. All the mediums I saw had the 
same hard, empty faces and common way of speak- 
ing. Not one of them looked as though they could 
be liked or trusted. And when I thought of my 
grandfather speaking to me through the mouth of 
the celebrated medium with his dirty finger-nails in 
that common room with the ugly gas bracket in 
front of all the people as the burglar's mother-in-law's 
grandfather had done, or mixing with the shady lot 
of spirits and the incorrigible practical jokers that 
stood on doorsteps and knocked run-away double 
knocks just for spite, I felt that it was all impossible, 
and I gave up going to the meetings. 

But I still felt anxious to have something to 
believe in. 

Then one day my eldest brother* came to stay 
with us. He was a fair, clever young man, rather 
scornful, with smooth pink cheeks and a medium- 
sized hooked nose like my grandfather's, a high, 
intellectual forehead, and quiet, absent-looking blue 
eyes that seemed as if they were always pondering 
over something. I was nervous with him, because he 
was very critical and thought that nearly every one 
was stupid and not worth disagreeing with. But he 
was very kind and liked to take me out to tea. He 
* Ford Madox-Hueffer. 



236 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD 

wore a black coat with a cape over the shoulders, and 
when we took hands and walked along it floated out 
a little way behind. 

Once he took me a long way to see a famous 
gentleman* who lived outside London. His house 
was quite a plain-looking little house, and when we 
went in there were a lot of people sitting round the 
table in a tiny dining-room having tea. He had a 
very long, broad, silky-grey beard, that fell down 
right over his chest and was wider at the end than 
at the beginning. There was no hair at all on his 
head, but he had on a pair of big round spectacles. 
His eyes were not bright, but they were wonderfully 
kind and understanding. I noticed them in a 
moment, because I had not seen such kind and 
understanding eyes since my grandfather died. 
They looked as though they could see to the end of 
the world and understand the tiniest thing they met, 
and were sorry for all the people that were unhappy. 
They made me feel he must be almost holy {not 
religious). 

He was one of the most learned men alive, but he 
was not too proud to talk to me although there were 
a lot of other people and I was so ignorant. And 
when we had been talking for some time I told him 
about the convent and the spiritualist meetings, and 
* Prince Peter Kropotkin. 



I FIND SOMETHING TO BELIEVE IN 237 

that I felt worried because everything seemed so 
difficult to believe in, and everybody quarrelled so 
much about their beliefs. But he said that I need 
not worry, and that all little people needed to believe 
in was kindness and pity and love (just ordinary love 
for one another, not perfect love or anything com- 
plicated), and that our whole duty was to do what 
little good we could in the world as we passed through 
it, and to try to understand as much as possible of 
the wonders that surround us, and help others to 
understand them. He said it was ridiculous to 
imagine that a God who could create such a mighty 
and wonderful universe would be so petty as to care 
whether we crossed ourselves with two fingers or 
with three, or whether we ate fish or meat on Fridays, 
or what sort of church we went to, or what sort of 
prayers we said, or that He would wish to punish us 
for doing or not doing any of those things at all, so 
long as we had done our best so far as we could 
understand. He said we could quite safely go upon 
our way doing what we felt to be right without 
worrying about the consequences to ourselves 
hereafter. 

He said that in Russia there had once been a great 
saint who taught the people how to live and had 
such a wonderful effect upon them that all the other 
saints in the neighbourhood were offended and the 



238 CHAPTERS FROM CHILDHOOD 

religious people said that he was anti-Christ. He 
didn't teach them about the proper way to be saved ; 
all he said was, " Love one another." And because 
he was so good and gentle and because they loved 
and honoured him so much they did what he told 
them and lived in peace and were very happy. And 
later, when he was very old and when death was near, 
he retired with one or two disciples to the top of a 
mountain to die in peace, but great multitudes of the 
people followed him even there. And in order not 
to disappoint them he told his disciples to carry him 
out to them. And he was just able to lift his hand 
and bless them and whisper, " Children, love one 
another ! " And they fell on their knees before him 
and swore to do his bidding. And the country all 
round the mountain was like paradise because the 
people were so well-behaved and never quarrelled 
or fought, or stole from one another or were cruel, 
because they loved one another. And God was 
pleased. And when the saint was safely dead and 
buried the other saints and religious people forgave 
him. 

The learned gentleman said that the saint's lesson 
was the greatest lesson, and when once we had 
learnt it we should be happy and everything else 
would be made clear to us. 

I said, " Thank you very much." And when 



I FIND SOMETHING TO BELIEVE IN 239 

afterwards I thought about what he had said, it 
seemed true and easy to understand and believe in. 
And I was glad because I thought I should not have 
to waste my time in worrying any more. 

For I was growing a big girl, and there were so 
many things I had to learn and think about. 



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